The Origins of Macau’s Overseas Diaspora
The migration of new people into Macau has been an integral part of its history, but information on the origins of mass movements before and after Macau’s founding have been missing from historical accounts. Nevertheless, the parallels to the present are unavoidable. Just as Filipinos, Thais, and immigrants from mainland Chinese arrive in Macau for work, better opportunities, and in some cases, to escape civil or social turmoil, many racially-mixed Portuguese left Goa and Malacca for eastern India in the 16th century, and began migrating to Macau and Southeast Asia in the 17th century for similar reasons.
Their motivations are understandable once we look further. Early studies on Goa reveal poor living conditions among the underclass, racial prejudice toward non-Europeans in general, and sporadic violence, especially toward Hindus and Muslims. Several decades after the Portuguese occupation of western India, the turmoil increased with the arrival of the Inquisition in 1560 and the persecution of New Christians (former Jews) and their Luso-Indian descendants. The added presence of a large and unsettled slave population, and unmarried men with no stake in government controlled trade, inevitably led to crime, civil disorder, and widespread miscegenation. The latter was decried by religious clerics as the root cause of Goa’s problems, demonizing the mestizo majority. By the time Macau was founded around 1557, the historian James Boyajian writes, despite the large amount of trade flowing through Goa to Lisbon, Portugal’s colonial empire was nearly bankrupt due to corruption and social excesses. Conditions appeared to worsen by the 17th century. Pietro Della Valle, an Italian traveler observed in 1623 that despite Goa’s riches, most Portuguese in Goa “…led very wretched lives “, undergoing so much distress from the lack of employment and poverty that some resorted to begging. The situation for non-Europeans, who were usually servants or slaves, was probably just as bad.
A steady stream of refugees from Goa soon began moving east toward Madras and Bengal in the early 16th century, the latter being the site of the first English settlement. Charles Lockyer, a traveler in 1711, estimated that there were at least 50,000 non-Europeans in Madras, the majority being former sailors, Portuguese-Africans, and escaped slaves from western India. Stefan Halikowski-Smith of Swansea University cites contemporary writers who estimated that 20,000 Portuguese descendants populated Bengal during this same period. Their primary motivations were to seek the protection of British authorities and to exercise a promise to trade freely. Many were welcomed as a source of cheap labor, for their skills with weapons, and for their contacts to a network of ports in Southeast Asia first established by Afonso Albuquerque in 1511.
Although we have no accurate count, a significant number became small time traders due to their familiarity with the sea and native customs. Many eventually made their way from Madras and Bengal toward Indo-China to the ancient kingdoms of Siam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and eventually to Macau, to take advantage of the “unofficial” private trade that was unregulated by Goa since the Dutch captured Malacca in 1641. The authorities in Macau actually were more focused on losses from the Japan trade in light of Christian persecutions occurring there even before Peter Mundy arrived in 1637. One of the earliest documents in the Macau Archives is a public notice from 1630 recording Jesuit and secular petitions to the Captain-General of Macau, Diogo Hieronimo da Silveria, to recover a junk laden with goods from Canton that was seized in Siam and brought to Japan. Trade had been momentarily halted and Macau was at risk of losing business if the incident was not resolved. The effort ultimately failed due to the consolidation of power by the Tokugawa Shogunate, leading to the closure of Nagasaki to Portuguese traders in 1639. This forced Macanese traders to intensify activity in Southeast Asia as Macau began a period of decline.
Lucio Sousa and other historians write that many of the free traders were former merchants, mercenaries, adventurers, and pirates, some branded as such because they operated outside legitimate authority. Describing this clandestine activity, Sousa indicates that the overwhelming majority were Eurasian, the result of mixed marriages between European Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians from the region. Their backgrounds had several advantages over Portuguese traders, who were hampered by the restrictions on commerce by Goa. Many had good rapport with Asian ship crews because of their familiarity with eastern cultures and languages. Many had knowledge of navigation and the geography of the southern seas. They also brought important connections, often through family, and information on trade routes which were unknown to their European rivals. Several of their descendants later played important roles in Macau’s development.
An example of those who moved with the migration, and helped Macau’s recovery, is provided by the Barretto family. Several members followed their fortunes from Portugal to Goa, Madras and Calcutta, and eventually to Macau in the 18th century.
The Barrettos
Many early Barrettos were prominent among the Portuguese in India and Asia. The first recorded member was Manuel Tellez Barretto, a ship captain in the fleet of Admiral Lopez Suarez in 1505, who was under orders of Afonso Albuquerque, Portuguese India’s second Governor-General. Another relative, João Nunes Barreto was consecrated Catholic Patriarch of Ethiopia in 1555. Two other relatives were Francis Barretto, nineteenth Governor of Portuguese India, who died at Goa in 1558, and Antonio Monez Barretto, the twenty-second Governor, who died in 1576. Many more used their wealth to build churches in Madras and Bombay. Some even loaned money to their British protectors, including Luis de Medeiro Barreto, a merchant in Madras, who lent the Council of Fort St George in Bengal 15,000 rupees in 1745.
The line of Barretto merchants, however, made the greatest contributions to the expansion of business in China. In the late 17th century, Antonio Lourenco Barretto, a merchant and money lender in Bombay, established a pattern that would be emulated in succeeding generations: he married a Portuguese woman, Pascoa de Sousa, converted to Catholicism, and adopted the name of his baptismal godfather. Family records indicate that Antonio Barretto’s father was from India’s Maratha community, while his mother may have been mixed-race Portuguese related to the Barrettos. The effect of this union was significant. Later generations would eventually control much of the Indian trade.
Antonio’s second son, Luis Barretto de Sousa, was born in Bombay in 1745. He began his career as a money lender and philanthropist, and later established the merchant firm: L. Barretto & Company. In 1796 Luis and his younger brother, Joseph Barretto Senior de Sousa, provided funds to rebuild the Portuguese Church in Calcutta. In 1797 Luis partnered with the same brother to found the first insurance company in the port of Macau, Casa de Sequros de Macao, insuring the cargos of other merchants and taking advantage of the developing China Trade. As Luis prospered and his wealth accumulated, he became known in India as “The Prince of Business”.
Joseph Barretto left the firm in 1806, although continuing as its agent in Calcutta, to establish Joseph Barretto & Co., adding his son, Joseph Barretto Junior. The new firm took full advantage of the unequal exchange in trade by importing Indian opium from Bombay to China; indigo to Japan and Shanghai; and ivory to England. Barretto & Co. also served as a merchant banker in the 1820s, and later as an agent for Jardine and Matheson in Macau, providing them with letters of credit to banks in Australia, India, and China. Joseph Barretto Junior’s son, Antonio Lorenzo Barretto Rodriquez, was named a director of the Casa de Seguros de Macao around 1810. A few years later he was elected to Macau’s municipal council, “the Leal Senado” (designated in 1644 by the restored Portuguese crown). Antonio Lorenzo’s son, Bartolomeu Barretto Rodriquez (1748-1845), was a tea merchant, and later also a director of the Casa de Seguros in 1822. In 1825, the son was elected chairman of Macau’s “Almatace da Camara”, the colony’s chamber of commerce.
The resources that Barretto connections represented, which included various uncles and a brother-in-law who also owned trading firms, allowed the family to purchase two merchant ships of its own. One vessel operated between the Cape of Good Hope and London. The other handled trade between Macau and the rest of China. Both enterprises combined to create one of the earliest examples of “vertical integration” known to exist in the Far East, linking traded commodities, insured by the family’s firm in Macau, with a tightly controlled distribution network that pre-dated modern multi-national corporations by almost two hundred years.
The Effects on Macau
It would be a mistake to conclude, however, that the business Luso-Indian and Macanese traders intended to attract did not face obstacles. In most cases, Macau did not see benefits from these trade relations for several years. The early strategy was conducted while the citizens of Macau suffered from an economic decline following the closure of Japan, Malacca, and Goa. This situation was soon compounded by civil wars in Southern China, and the erosion of Ming control until the dynasty was overthrown by the Manchus in 1644. Complicating matters further, Macau was caught up in the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy in the same year.
All these factors tended to dry up the flow of goods and trade that had flourished only a few years before, leading to food shortages and a cessation of commerce between Canton and Macau until 1679. The changes to Macau were evident only a few years after Peter Mundy’s visit. When the English ship Hind arrived in 1644, historian Rogerio Miguel Puga writes that Francis Breton, an English trader on board, was surprised by Macau’s “extreme poverty” given Mundy’s accounts of wealth, which Breton attributed to the sudden drop in commerce.
The situation did not change until the Manchu Emperor Kangxi allowed commerce between Macau and Canton to restart in 1679, and until 1684 when foreign trade was authorized. In the meantime, Portugal’s relationship to England with regard to Asia began to improve in 1661 with the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganca, the daughter of future Portuguese King Joao IV. The king ceded Bombay and Tangier as part of the dowry, and allowed the English to establish factories in India. Macau’s ties to English traders, driven by the need for protection from the Dutch, also began to change. By the end of the 17th century, Puga writes, Macanese ships added Madras and Bengal to their trade routes. By 1715 over forty British East India Company vessels traded freely in Canton and other Chinese ports using Macau as a staging ground.
The situation inside Macau also began to improve. Following the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy in 1644 through the opening of China to foreign trade, local institutions such as the Municipal Council (renamed the Leal Senado for its support of Joao IV), the Santa Casa de Misericordia, and the Jesuit community grew in prominence through their support of new immigrants. Although there were divisions among ethnic communities due to language and religion, the city as a result became more cosmopolitan and culturally diverse because of an influx of many ethnic groups and nationalities. One local cleric estimated in 1745 that Macau was populated by twelve thousand men, including Portuguese, Macanese, Malays, English, Indians, Timorese, Mozambicans, Moors, and assorted “half-castes” among many foreigners residing there. The estimate did not include the large number of women and children of similar races who were left uncounted. Their presence attested to an increase in commercial traffic and new business. All contributed to the diversification of goods, which by the end of the 18th century focused on opium, spices, and precious stones from India, and indentured labor, silver, silk, hardwoods, porcelain, and teas from Southeast Asia. It was also during this period that the seeds of future migrations from Macau were planted as a result of the English presence and conflicts with China over the importation of opium.
But let us deviate briefly from the geo-politics and economics of the period. In the next article, we will look more closely at how Macau’s culture developed up to the Opium Wars, and the relation of cultural identity to Macanese families, communities, and institutions.
Please stay tuned. (Back to the Articles)
Sources
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