Peter Mundy’s Dinner
Whenever I am in Macau I make a point of walking through the Historic Centre, and along the old Avenida de Praia Grande. As a social historian, the boulevard has special meaning to me. I often notice the streaming traffic in front of the Palacio do Governo and the distant steeple of St. Lawrence Church behind it. It was between the shoreline and the courtyards, shops, and apartment buildings we now see that many of my relatives in old Macau spent their lives, several literally baptized, married, raised children, and were buried within a few hilly blocks of the church. But the last time I visited, I recalled passages from a diary written in 1637 by an Englishman named Peter Mundy, describing what life was like during the period, at the height of Macau’s “Golden Era”. Mundy’s chronicle, and China of the late Ming dynasty that he witnessed, provide many examples of the influences that shaped present day Macau.
So, let us go back in time. The following is a short segment from Peter Mundy’s forgotten diary, summarized with contextual notes, which may help our understanding of Macau’s present by looking more closely at its past.
On the evening of October 8, 1637, Peter Mundy, a ship’s factor (agent), accompanied by Admiral John Weddell, Protestant Minister Arthur Hatch, and Christopher Parr, the Purser of the Dragon, Weddell’s flag ship, landed on the strand just off the Praia Grande to attend a dinner at the government palace. Weddell’s squadron of five vessels arrived in the region a few months earlier under orders from Lord William Corteen, a commercial privateer under an English Royal Charter signed in April 1636, to open trade with China. The dinner was one of many attempts by the British to convince the Portuguese to obtain permission to build factories (trading and store houses) in Canton, the large port city just up the Pearl River. This particular meeting was the result of an earlier encounter on June 28, during which Mundy and two other officials were sent ashore with letters of introduction from King Charles I of England and Dom Miguel de Noronha, the Viceroy of Goa, to the Captain-General of Macau, Domingos da Camara de Noronha. After many negotiations, and unauthorized British incursions up the Pearl River Delta, the dinner was scheduled to ease tensions between the European rivals.
Macau in 17th Century Asia
England was a rising naval power at the time, but without the benefits of Asian trade that Portugal, and especially Macau, enjoyed. But Macau had endured trials of its own. Since the first attempt by Tome’ Pires in 1517 to open relations with China, rejection by the young Ming Emperor Shih-tsung led to four decades of attacks on European vessels, and the re-routing of Portuguese ships and Jesuit missionaries to Japan in 1549. Only the defeat of piracy on the Chinese coast by the Portuguese pushed China to consider a gradual thaw in relations, leading to the first trade fairs on Macau’s outer islands in 1553, and permission to build permanent structures in 1557. Macau’s success as a trading center of Japanese silver and Chinese silk, which soon included many of China’s vassal states, led to competition with the Dutch and English. In 1622, less than twenty years before the encounter with Weddell’s ships, a Portuguese militia consisting of local men, priests and African slaves, supported by cannons forged in Macau, soundly defeated a Dutch naval invasion. In the years that followed, Macau flourished virtually independent of Lisbon and Goa, both cut off by a blockade of the Malaccan Straits, and eventually by the Dutch seizure of Malacca in 1641.
When Weddell’s ships arrived in the harbor, Macau was enjoying a degree of political and economic autonomy, derived from trade with Japan, China, and most of Europe through Portugal and Spain. In this new environment, Captain-General Noronha had little reason to jeopardize relations with Imperial China, and every reason to mistrust Peter Mundy and his countrymen as they landed just off the Praia Grande.
Mundy was no neophyte, however. As a seasoned trader in India and China, he was appointed chief factor of Weddell’s fleet because of his skill as a negotiator and fluency in Portuguese and Spanish. Fortunately for us, it was also Mundy’s routine to transcribe his impressions and sketch images of each journey, including his six-month sojourn in Macau from June to December 1637.
Peter Mundy in Macau
Mundy’s diary states that the October dinner began with introductions to members of the Leal Senado, Macau’s governing council, and other local dignitaries from the Santa Casa de Misericordia. Other historians indicate that all were members of Macau’s merchant class. The Portuguese military contingent was led by the Captain-General’s second in command, Captain-Major Antonio de Oliveira Aranha. The Major later invited Peter Mundy to stay in his home for a few days.
The setting for the dinner at the Palacio was befitting a wealthy trading port, and was probably meant to suggest to the visitors that their participation as trading partners was unnecessary. Mundy and others marveled at a richly furnished room, featuring a dining table outfitted with gold and silver plates and matching cutlery. Exotically decorated chairs and hangings lined the walls. Large Japanese folding screens called “Beeombos” separated portions of the room. Each screen had multiple panels depicting stories and colorful landscapes, which when fully extended measured up to nine feet. Each panel, Mundy wrote, was “…painted with (a) variety off curious colleurs intermingled with gold, containing beasts, birds, fishes, forrrests, flowers, fruites…”, providing a feeling of tranquility when the assembled group was seated. All were obtained through trade with Japan and other regions.
A savory meal highlighted the evening. Each guest was served portions of meat “… broughtt between 2 silver plates…”. Several dishes were offered, the frequency and variety of each attracting special notice. “For before a man had Don(e) with the one,” Mundy writes, “there was another service stood ready for him…” Behind each guest was an African servant ready for the smallest request. Beverages were similarly offered. Accompanying each place setting was a silver goblet “…which were no sooner empty butt there stood those ready that filld them againe with excellent … Portugall wine.” In the kitchens, women of mixed race, probably from Malacca, Thailand, or Japan, stood ready to replenish each course. Light music also played in the background, performed by Chinese singers and skilled musicians on harps and guitars from other trade ports, also a benefit of Macau’s extensive reach.
Following the dinner, Mundy was entertained in Aranha’s home. He was especially taken with two of the Captain-Major’s Eurasian daughters, Escolastica and Catharina, whom he described as “pretty mestizninhes (mestizos), and noted: “… except in England, I thincke not in the world bee overmatched For their pretty Feature and complexion, … .” The Macanese scholar C.A. Mantalto de Jesus wrote in 1902 that Aranha’s daughters were destined to be the mothers of a new “mixed but legitimate and Christian race”. Mundy took special notice of Escolastica’s and Catharina’s style of dress. In formal settings, each daughter was clothed in small Japanese kimonos “adorned with precious Jewells and Costly apparel.” Their hair, pulled up to the crown, was similarly decorated with jewels and other decorations.
Mundy observed that most Macanese women dressed in this manner, often covered in public over the head with a shawl-like garment called a “Sherazzee”, with a lower kimono around the waist extending to the feet. Out on the avenues and plazas, the wealthier women “… are carried in hand chaires …, all close covered, off which there are very Costly … brought from Japan.”
Indoors, all classes wore wide sleeved kimonos without the upper shawls, the less costly ones made of cotton and silk, while others were embroidered and woven with gold. Mundy also noted: “Butt when they goe without (their sedan chairs), the Mistris is hardly knowne from the Maide or slave wenche by outward appearance, … butt that their Sherazzees are finer.”
Conclusion
Peter Mundy’s diary is a watershed moment in Macau’s history. In these short passages we see interesting details about cultural influences and class divisions, as well as commerce and wealth, which were all part of Macau’s daily life. Japan was then one of Macau’s principal trading partners, and the Jesuit mission in Nagasaki already had 300,000 Christian converts. Mundy’s host, Captain-Major Aranha, also spent two years in Japan from 1629 to 1631. These contacts account for a high degree of trading activity, Japanese styles of dress, and other items mentioned. Another interesting fact is that only three hundred European Portuguese lived in Macau and Malacca at the time. Macau’s population was around 10,000, with 12,000 inhabitants in Malacca. The great majority were mestizos and indigenous people, most of whom were involved in trade.
Mundy’s later descriptions of St. Paul’s church also suggests its central place in the community. In fact, several years before Mundy’s visit the Macanese were memorialized on the structure’s corner stone. The Latin inscription reads: VIRGINI MAGNE MATRI, CIVITAS MACAENSIS LUBENS, POSUIT AN. 1602. (Great Virgin Mother, the Macanese community lovingly dedicates this place. Ordained in the year 1602.) It was one of the first times that evidence of Macau’s cultural identity appeared. The inscription can still be seen today.
Peter Mundy’s other observations of 17th century Macau are equally enlightening, but those will have to wait until the next installment. Then we will look at his observations on cuisine, architecture, education, life on the streets, and leisure.
Please stay tuned. (Back to the Articles)
Sources:
The Travels of Peter Mundy in India and Asia, 1608-1667, The Hakluyt Society, 1907, based on his chronicle of 1637.
