The Macanese Community of Shanghai

The Chinese port city of Shanghai was one of the great prizes of the nineteenth century Sino–Anglo wars. Long before it was conceded by China as a “Treaty Port” under the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing that ended the first Opium War, Shanghai had been founded in 746 and served as a commercial center in the 12th century under the Song dynasty. Strategically located on a main tributary of the Yangtze River, and in close proximity by ship to Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, 19th century Shanghai played a key role in expanding trade in Asia.[1]

Under the Nanjing agreement, known as the “Unequal Treaty System” beginning in November 1843, the British, French, and American governments exercised extraterritorial powers in the city leading to the creation of “concessions” that housed commercial factories and residences for foreign traders. Shortly after the treaty signing, the British and American administrations merged to form an “International Settlement” to be governed by a joint municipal council. This was followed by the creation of a separate French council in 1849. Each nation initially appointed foreign merchants as Vice Consuls until professional diplomats took over in the late 19th century.[2]

The Macanese Community [3]

Due to Lisbon’s diminished influence, racially-mixed Portuguese from Hong Kong and Macau, with no national concession to support them, settled slowly in Shanghai’s other foreign settlements based on their occupational roles. Among the first six Portuguese nationals listed by the North China Daily News and Herald in 1850, for example, four were mercantile assistants in large companies from Hong Kong and the United States that set up offices in the British-American concession of Shanghai. Two others were employed by the Herald, headquartered in the French quarter.[4] The population of the community did not change significantly until after the 1887 “Treaty of Friendship and Commerce” between Portugal and China, which attempted to solidify Macau’s permanence in China by taking advantage of the latter’s weakened state.[5]

By 1895 a local census listed 1,936 Portuguese workers and family members, increasing to as many as 4,000 through the end of the 1940s.[6] As a relatively small group among almost 111,000 foreigners in Shanghai, the Portuguese were well represented in government, commerce, and social life. Although the evidence of their origins before landing in Shanghai is incomplete, a large group seems to have bypassed Hong Kong altogether and migrated directly from Macau.[7]

The majority lived in the French concession in an area known as “Siccawei” (Xujiahui), where the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci first began his mission around 1560. The area is named after a Chinese Christian convert and scholar named Xu Guangqi, who donated large plots of land for the building of a church and an astronomical observatory which still exist today. Unlike Hong Kong’s restrictions on non-English workers, there seems to have been fewer barriers confronting the Macanese. Two distinguishing features were evident: a wide dispersal of Portuguese workers across different sectors of the economy; and a large number of  social organizations, which suggests extensive personal networks. As we shall see, the latter tended to maintain connections between the population in Shanghai and Macanese communities in Hong Kong and Macau. Let us look at these characteristics in more detail.

Working in Shanghai

Some of the earliest Macanese arrivals listed in the North-China Heald in 1850 worked as “mercantile assistants”, that is, as clerks or bookkeepers, for large foreign mercantile and trading companies. T.P. Cordeiro, for example, worked as a mercantile assistant at Wolcott, Bates & Co., a New York based firm that imported teas, silks, satins, shawls, oil, and pepper from Canton and Shanghai to Massachusetts, Liverpool, and Amsterdam. Another was J.S. Baptista, who worked for Dent, Beale & Co. in Shanghai, which was the main competitor in Hong Kong to trading giant Jardine Matheson & Co.. Baptista began working before Dent consolidated business interests in Shanghai in 1867 after defaulting during a banking crisis. Another worker, P.J. da Silva Loureiro, Jr, worked in the American firm Russell & Company, which employed a grand uncle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Another was António dos Santos, also a mercantile assistant, who worked at two English trading companies, first at Holiday and Wise, Co. in 1850, and then later at Gilman, Bowman & Co. Two other workers were employed by Shanghai’s first English newspaper, the North-China Herald. António J.H. de Carvalho, who later founded a newspaper of his own, was listed as the “Overseer”, while Cypriano E. do Rozario, was the paper’s sole compositor.[8]

Among the largest employers of the Macanese after 1850 were printing companies owned by Macanese from Hong Kong or Macau. One of the earliest printing businesses, Carvalho & Co, founded in 1857, was owned by the previously mentioned Antonio J.H. de Carvalho, the younger brother of Januario de Carvalho, Chief Cashier of the Hong Kong Treasury. The company was reorganized in 1875 due to poor sales, then sold in 1878 to Noronha & Co., the largest printer in Hong Kong. Up to its closure in 1893, the company employed at least fourteen Macanese printers and compositors. There were also seven other printing companies, which owned and operated by Macanese between 1867 and 1940 in Shanghai. These employed an equal number as Carvalho & Co., and several hundred Chinese and foreign staff.  It is estimated that about half of the owners were from Macau, and the others from Hong Kong.

Unlike Hong Kong, the number of other solely-owned Macanese enterprises not in the printing field was far less, and began operating later in the period.  Wang Zhicheng’s research indicates that there were only six recorded Portuguese enterprises in Shanghai from 1900 through 1949. They included one established before 1911, two from 1911-1920, and one each between 1921-1930, 1931-1941, and 1945-1949. He writes that those enterprises included an exporter, two importers, an independent industrialist, and two dealers. The six Portuguese enterprises, Wang wrote, employed twenty-six Chinese staff members, four Chinese workers, and eight other foreign staff members.

Networks

The most important sector of the Macanese community was not business, however, but social networks. Most local organizations and clubs making up these networks served as vehicles and supports for Macanese businesses, while creating personal and professional bonds among the expatriate families that lived in the treaty port for over a century. Two important goals of these organizations was providing a sense of cultural identity, and in at least one case, military protection. In many cases, the members either formerly belonged to similar organizations in Hong Kong, or had relatives in them.

The oldest was the Club Portuguez, founded in 1882 by a committee made up of Joao Carlos Danenberg (Portuguese-Danish); H. Pereira; Francisco Simão dos Santos Oliveira; and Antonio Joaquim Yvanovich (Portuguese-Hungarian). Each member was born in Macau, and migrated from Hong Kong or directly to Shanghai in the 1860s. All had relatives belonging to Hong Kong social clubs. The same could be said for the Club de Recreio founded in 1893 and affiliated via relatives with Hong Kong’s Club de Recreio in 1906. Another sporting club was the Clube Lusitano de Shanghai founded in 1910 and connected to relatives who were members of Hong Kong’s Club Lusitano founded in 1882. There were also a number of benevolent organizations in Shanghai similar to Macau’s Santa Casa de Misericordia (Holy House of Mercy) founded in 1569, including Associacao Macaense de Socorro Mutuo de Shanghai (1910), the Associação des Senhoras Portuguesas (1920), and the Portuguese Benevolent Association (1945).

The premier organization within the community was the Portuguese Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC). The larger Volunteer militia was made up of international units totaling less than 2,500 members. The SVC was first organized in 1853 by British and American units in response to the “Small Swords Society’s” uprising during the Taiping Rebellion, and fought its first battle in 1854 against Chinese Qing troops. The Volunteers were then reorganized in 1861 until disbanded in 1942 by the invading Japanese army.[9] As part of the larger Corps, the Portuguese Company was slow to gain acceptance until early 1906. Once reliant on other militias for protection, the lack of an organized company remained an embarrassment for Portuguese businessmen until volunteers were recognized by the international municipal councils, and trained by British army instructors.

The importance of the “Portuguese Volunteers”, as they were called, to the larger community was significant for several reasons. The company was ostensibly created to protect the Macanese community from periodic riots and other actions threatening Shanghai’s borders.  Throughout the short history of the “Portuguese Volunteers”, however, the presence of uniformed members and ritual gatherings, rather than the infrequent calls to arm, became the principal rationale for the organization’s existence. Composed primarily of prominent men, the membership was well established in government and business. Many members had parents and/or grandparents who migrated from Macau and Hong  Kong in the 1840s and 50s. Those factors provided credibility and gravitas within a community where many families entered and departed after short stays. Above all, the Portuguese Volunteers had long term interests in maintaining positions in banks and trading companies, as well as the status of their families. Many of these families had lived in Shanghai for three or four generations by the dawn of the 20th century. Shanghai essentially provided them with an opportunity to ascend and maintain themselves unbounded by old world restrictions. Most had a stake in securing a place in society that was, in some instances, denied them in Macau and Hong Kong.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, this overview of the Shanghai community cannot adequately express the emotional ties among émigrés that developed over the decades. Many Macanese who had parents and relatives living in Shanghai during its heyday, or fled China at end of World War II, continue to express deep attachments.[10] Even while Shanghai grew into a busy port city, however, the center of the Portuguese community in Asia from the middle of the 19th century remained in Hong Kong. This fortified enclave under British rule quickly become a vortex of global commerce, where the hidden lives of ethnic residents were played out over 156 years. As more documentation, data, and analysis from the period becomes available, the details of the Macanese presence in Hong Kong can be discussed in greater detail.

That will be topic of future articles.

Notes

[1] In 1843 the English horticulturalist Robert Fortune, writing before Hong Kong developed, stated that “Shanghae (sic) is by far the most important station for foreign trade on the coast of China, and is consequently attracting a large share of public attention.” He described walking through the streets finding merchandise such as silk and embroidery, cotton goods, porcelain, ready-made clothes and numerous curiosity shops selling carved bamboo ornaments. Robert Fortune, Three Year’s Wanderings Among the Northern Provinces of China, London, 1847: 109-110.

[2] Some data and information in this article can be found in Wang Zhicheng, Portuguese Shanghai, edited by R. Edward Glatfelter, Fundacao Macau, 1998:18.

[3] Mention of the “Portuguese” in this article refer to ethnic Macanese from Macau, who were racially-mixed Portuguese, or as identified in other articles as “Luso-Asians”. For clarity, all references to Portuguese and Macanese in Shanghai refer to members of the same ethnic group.

[4] North China Herald, August 3, 1850; The Chinese Repository, 1851,141-49.

[5] At the center was a struggle to define Macau’s position in relation to China as the Manchu government crumbled. Sensing China’s weakness, in 1849 the Leal Senato, Macau’s municipal council, attempted to proclaim its sovereignty, but was beset with rebellions among local Chinese and the assassination of Governor Ferreira do Amaral. Some resolution was achieved in 1887 with the signing of the “Treaty of Friendship and Commerce” between Portugal and China, but resulted in limited recognition of Macau’s permanence and “dual jurisdiction” so long as local policies remained acceptable to China’s Imperial government  Austin Coates, A Macao Narrative, Hong Kong University Press, 2009:133-35.

[6] An accurate tally of Portuguese residence is difficult to pin down. According to Shanghai’s Public Bureau of Municipal Government census of 1945, there were 110,868 foreign residents, of which 2,043 were Portuguese. Wang Zhicheng, a contemporary Chinese scholar, writes that in August 1946 the Civil Affairs Department of the Shanghai Municipal Government stated that there were 2,255 Portuguese residents, and only 65,610 foreign residents. In the same manuscript, Wang also cities data from Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau from the early 1950s, which indicate there were over 4,000 Portuguese residents (most identifying as “Macanese”).  Wang Zhicheng, Portuguese Shanghai, op. cit., 1998:12,45, 84-118.)

[7] A review of recent genealogies of several individuals mentioned in this article suggest that several traveled from Macau without spending time in Hong Kong, especially in the period 1840 to 1860. See Jorge Forjaz, Familias Macaense, 1996 and 2017 editions., International Institute of Macau.

[8] Data for this section can be found in Wang Zhicheng, Portuguese Shanghai, op..cit.

[9] Information about the Portuguese Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corp is scattered among many obscure documents, some that have recently surfaced from private collections. The present article relies on a history of the Portuguese Company entitled “Twentieth Anniversary of the Portuguese Co. SVC ” that was published in 1926.

[10] The newsletters of many Macanese organizations, accessible via FarEastCurrents.com (Diaspora), provide several nostalgic descriptions of their experiences.