The Legacy: Cultural Development and Identity in Macau: 1557-1841
In the last three articles we looked at Macau’s development as a trading center linking Europe, China and Southeast Asia beginning from the middle of the 16th century. As a result, the colony became more cosmopolitan and culturally diverse, and its importance as a nexus between East and West grew more pronounced due to a military and commercial alliance with England.
In this article we will look more closely at Macau’s cultural life by answering three questions: What were the origins of the culture? How did Macau’s culture develop as a result of the changes summarized earlier? In what social settings did Macanese cultural identity first appear and how was it sustained?
There are many ways to understand and analyze cultural activities, so these questions are not meant to yield any definitive conclusions. Also, given multiple political and economic factors over almost three hundred years, it may be difficult to assign the degree to which historical events influenced Macau’s culture. We can, however, identify which cultural elements played important roles, as well as to suggest how and why Macau’s culture was affected by conditions that shaped its future. My primary purpose will be to suggest how specific elements evolved into its present forms, and to explain how the culture was transferred to other locations as the Macanese Diaspora developed after the 1840s. We begin with the elements of Macau’s culture.
Language
Among Portuguese descendants in 17th century Macau two characteristics were most evident: the use of a Luso-Asian patois that facilitated their ability to communicate with different cultural groups, and the adoption of Roman Catholicism blended with local customs. Each were part of a “maritime culture” created by Macau’s seaborne commerce and the migrations of people in and out of the city throughout the period.
Some historians, including Dijanirah Couto, suggest that a principal creole dialect or patois developed among former renegades, slaves, defrocked priests, adventurers, and convicts, as well as Jews and New Christians, who worked as interpreters (linguas) for the Portuguese military and the merchant class. Others have written that new languages likely developed from a creole variety of Portuguese brought from Sri Lanka (Ceylon) that spread through ports in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, and later to Dutch and English territories. As the first points of contact, these language forms were linguistic hybrids blending Portuguese, Malay, and Chinese that developed into a patois that brought together different cultures and linguistic systems, and became the means by which early traders from foreign lands communicated.
C.R. Bawden, a cultural linguist, wrote that some of these new languages appeared as early as 1545, and one in particular was a form of “Indo Portuguese” that eventually became the lingua franca between Europeans and Asians for diplomacy, trade and missionary work. First documented by 17th century Chinese officials in Macau, Bawden concluded that this Indo-Portuguese dialect had time to acquire its own grammatical system, together with a large number of new words borrowed from regional languages and dialects, and a modified pronunciation. It was this modified form of Portuguese which found its way to Macau. Today we know it as “Maquista”.
Religion
Another important element in Macau’s culture is religion and its early association with education. Portuguese colonialism in India was guided by two principal objectives: the trading of spices and other commodities, and the religious conversion of indigenous populations, two policies that closely tied the Portuguese Monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. The former was represented by the Estado da India, the colonial apparatus of the King, and the latter by the Bishop of Goa, who in 1560 was succeed by the transfer of the Portuguese Inquisition to India.
The connection between these powerful allies was described by the 17th century chronicler Diogo do Couto, who wrote that “The Kings of Portugal always aimed in this conquest of the East at so unifying the two powers: spiritual and temporal, that the one should never be exercised without the other.” In reality, Portugal’s empire in Asia was, as C.R. Boxer wrote, a “military and maritime enterprise cast in an ecclesiastical mould”. It was only after the arrival of the Jesuits at Goa in 1542 that the religious conversion of Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists became a priority of the Church, using subtle methods of persuasion and a percentage from trading profits that were protected by Portuguese ships and soldiers.
Macau’s development came as a consequence of the Jesuits’ desire to become embedded in China. During colonization, the Society of Jesus and other religious orders built numerous churches, schools, hospitals, orphanages, and convents to serve the Macanese community while waiting for permission to set up missions in the Middle Kingdom. The Jesuits also diligently preserved the journals of Portuguese explorers in early libraries and archives, while chronicling the growth of Macau as the “City in the Name of God in China”. Students in religious schools were taught the classics, mathematics, languages, and later commercial skills, including stenography, printing, and horticulture, anticipating the demands of trade in the coming years. As a result, the flow of immigrants began to concentrate on Macau because of its stability, and its reputation as a center for commerce and culture.
Between Two Cultures
Some historians and anthropologists also point to an underlying condition of the Macanese as suspended “between two poles”, a metaphor describing their historic condition between conservative Europe and multi-cultural Macau. These tensions are rooted in the puritanical canons of the Portuguese Church, which dictated Vatican dogma, racial purity and chastity, and the pragmatic needs of the Estado da India, which encouraged inter-racial marriages and liaisons with native women for the sake of preserving the empire. The anthropologist Joao de Pina-Cabral suggests that the reconciliation of these potential opposites led to a unique but conflicted culture in Macau. Jorge Morbey, a cultural historian, sees this blending as leading to tensions that often appear within inter-racial families, and in simmering conflicts between older residents and later arrivals.
Cultural tensions within Macau society can be seen on multiple levels, for example, in the unique blend of culinary styles and in the temperament of Luso-Asians who continue to migrate into the city. For example, Mukta Das, a specialist in the history of foods, writes that the historical use of fish in the transportation of wet spices from Madras, as well as a shared source of protein in India and China, is well documented. She also suggests that Bengali foods have identifiable Portuguese and Goan influences, especially in the use of potatoes in curry, in dishes such as vindaloo, and most notably with desserts that incorporate Portuguese techniques for curdling milk and partly thickened puddings.
Social Temperament
The psychological aspects of Macanese culture are also evident. Social outlook, as Morbey points out, can be seen in various temperaments and attitudes toward others, especially in Macau’s early years between those who remained close to Portuguese Europe and those who were more aligned with Asia. During periods of economic and social crisis, a degree of nationalistic pride, and perhaps jealousy, also was evident between families that remained in Macau and those who were accused of “abandoning” it for other ports. A mitigating influence, as Sheyla Zandonai points out, has always been the integration of different cultures through succeeding waves of immigrants. This has required a high degree of tolerance among the Macanese, and as Morbey writes, the necessity for real or latent conflicts to be concealed under the guise of peaceful coexistence.
Given these elements, we may wonder where potential conflicts over language, religion, and social temperament are ultimately resolved, and how Macau’s culture has survived relatively intact during subsequent migrations. As we shall see, such settings include families, communities, and social institutions, which often became incubators of cultural practices and attitudes over three centuries in Macau. The subsequent development of these social spaces allowed the transference of culture to new locations as the Macanese Diaspora expanded.
Families
Macanese families emerged as a result of the first Luso-Asian unions. After the conquest of Goa in 1509, Afonso Albuquerque initiated a policy of inter-racial marriage to maintain his fighting force and the colonial bureaucracy throughout Portugal’s far -flung Asian possessions. Following Albuquerque’s death in 1515, these unions continued to be permitted by the Estado da India due to the expedience of the military and trade. These unions were partially the result of Lisbon’s policies forbidding European women from making the journey to Asia, but also the prevalence of female slavery. The historian Isabel Lenor da Silva de Sebra writes that many of these women were indentured servants, kidnapped girls, and surrogates intended for the “Marriage Markets” of the Portuguese colonies. Nearly all came from trading ports in Southeast Asia, including Goa, Malacca, the Philippines, Japan, and Timor.
The Portuguese households of Goa and Macau included many women in various roles as wives, concubines, and servants, all living with their respective children. One of the characteristics of the period were large mestizo family groups made up of legitimate and illegitimate children. A common practice was the acceptance of illegitimate children and multiple sexual relations with servants and slaves by males in the household. This was well established in most Portuguese colonies, and had important consequences for the future of the Macanese community.
The acceptance of multi-racial children from these unions essentially created bonds between the Portuguese and indigenous communities, lessened the impact of colonization in many early settlements. Such alliances based on familial ties in India, Malacca, Macau, Brazil, and Africa helped diminish the influence of the Dutch and English for almost two centuries. Despite the discord over racial purity and legitimacy that sometimes divided generations, economic priorities in Goa and Macau tended to breakdown discord within families, and over time allowed a semblance of unity to occur.
Family Networks
Connections between Macanese families through various unions in Goa and Macau also suggest the roles that generational networks played during this period. To offer one example, according to genealogist Jorge Forjaz, the descendants of Rui Lopes, a 12th century Portuguese soldier on the northern frontier at Chaves (then part of Spain), can be traced thirteen generations later to Antonio Rafael Alvares, a 17th century Captain-General of Diu, a major Portuguese trading port just north of Goa. Although born in Lisbon around 1650, Alvares spent his military career in India, where he married a local woman and raised four sons and several grandchildren who were prominent in Goa’s military and religious establishment.
The transition of the large Alvares family from 1700 to 1899 in Goa and Macau illustrates these changes as well. Research shows that during the 18th century 40% of Alvares males remained in the Portuguese army, while 40% were priests, and 20% were doctors. By the 19th century 59% of Alvares men had made the transition to become physicians in Macau, while only 3% remained in the military and 6% entered the priesthood, some disenchanted with conditions in Goa. Other professions also began to appear. In the early 19th century more than 18% of Alvares men practiced law in Macau, while 12% taught in schools and universities, some in Portugal.
Communities
Despite the success of some families, most Macanese outside Macau could expect long years of work and social isolation, especially in highly structured societies like British Hong Kong. One of the few shelters from this imposed order were their large extended families. Macanese women, with few exceptions, left the monotony of the workplace to their fathers, uncles, brothers, and husbands. Many accepted roles as wives, mothers, and as managers of large households. The pattern was a carryover from traditions begun in Goa and Macau. Many early families, especially in expatriate communities throughout Southeast Asia, supported households of more than ten children, and others, like the Macanese in Hong Kong and Shanghai after the end of the Opium Wars, averaged nearly twenty family members, not including servants and their families.
Most households also were part of a larger community that remained connected to the Church in each location, but was culturally separate from other groups. An observer in 1920s, for example, stated that there was a large Portuguese Community living near the Cathedral in Hong Kong, and formed the bulk of the Catholic community in the parish. A description of the Ho Man Tin neighborhood of Kowloon suggests a similar pattern throughout the 1930s.
Institutions
The legacy of Macanese families and communities reached its most tangible form through the creation of social institutions. As Macau gained commercial autonomy from Goa and Lisbon in the late 16th century, several local institutions emerged based on familial and commercial ties. These included Macau’s Municipal Council (founded by merchants in 1582 and later renamed the Leal Senado in 1644), the Santa Casa de Misericordia, which was founded in 1569 by the same class for the care of the indigent and orphans, and the Almatace da Camara, Macau’s chamber of commerce founded in 1583. As more families ventured outside Macau to take advantage of the expanding trade, especially after the 1840’s, the communities they formed in each location produced similar institutions in which Macanese could congregate, socialize, and conduct business. These included the Club Lusitano (1886) and the Clube Recreio (1903) in Hong Kong, two associated Lusitano chapters in Shanghai and Bangkok, both founded in the 1890s, and the Shanghai Volunteers Corps, a militia and social organization founded in 1906.
In each setting, the cultural tensions among Macanese were often reproduced in later generations outside Macau through club activities. These included the use of the spoken patois, which was only used among members in families and within the walls of the institution, the practice of religious ceremonies associated with expatriate Catholic parishes, and most commonly, in the preparation and consumption of traditional cuisine. As expatriate Macanese businesses grew, another valued activity was the ability to conduct business in a leisurely setting, much like modern businessmen and women interact on a golf course or in tennis clubs. The added importance of identifying suitable marriage partners for children through club activities, and an assurance of social equality based on club membership, added other functions for many institutions. Each reinforced the validity of Macau’s culture for those living in foreign environments.
Conclusion
Thus, the preservation of certain cultural elements, including language, religion, and social temperament, each emblematic of Macanese identity, was first maintained within families, and then across generations through familial networks. These elements, in turn, were transferred to other locations where Macanese migrated through the creation of social clubs. These clubs effectively insured the survival of the culture outside Macau, even when conditions at home put various elements at risk. The continued existence of many Macanese associations, representing thousands of extended families in thirty-five countries, suggests that this unique process of cultural preservation, which began nearly five centuries ago, remains viable well into the 21th century.
Next time we will look at the significance of Macau’s culture and its revitalization in the Diaspora since the retrocession in 1999.
Please stay tuned. (Back to the Articles)
