Historical Perspectives on China & Macau, and Contacts with Europe during the Ming & Qing Dynasties Edited by Carmen Amado Mendes Isabel Murta Pina
Historical Perspectives on China & Macau, and Contacts with Europe during the Ming & Qing Dynasties Edited by Carmen Amado Mendes Isabel Murta Pina Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, I.P. CIÊNCIA, TECNOLOGIA E ENSINO SUPERIOR 浪 尸 气 大 学 UNIVERSIDADE DE MACAU UNIVERSITY OF MACAU
Title Historical Perspectives on China & Macau, and Contacts with Europe during the Ming & Qing Dynasties Editors Carmen Amado Mendes Isabel Murta Pina Series Historical Studies Coordination: Carmen Amado Mendes and Isabel Murta Pina Editing Support Fausto Camacho Fialho Published by Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, LR Rua da Junqueira, 30 1300-343 Lisboa - Portugal www.cccm.gov.pt I geral@cccm.gov.pt TH. (+351) 21361 乃70 Universidade de Macau Avenida da,Universidade, Taipa Macau - China www.um.edu.mo I info@um.edu.mo Tel. (+853) 8822 8833 Printed by Multitipo - Artes Gráficas, Lda. Print run 800 exemplares Cover illustration Fan Lacquer, paper China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), 19th century Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre Museum, Lisbon, inv. 1008 Photo: Paulo Alexandrino & Masayuki Kondo Lisbon I 2022 ISBN: 978-972-8586-59-1 Legal deposit: 507 280/22 © All rights reserved.
CONTENTS NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ................................................................................. 7 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 11 SECTION 1: CHINESE MARITIME TRADE, ENTREPRENEURS AND ROUTES CHAPTER I FRANÇOIS GIPOULOUX Maritime Trade Expansion in Late Ming and Early Qing China: Why Were Long-lasting Trade Organisations So Problematic? .............................................. 21 CHAPTER II JAMES CHIN Family Business and Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs of the Western Pacific: A Historical Perspective........................................................................................... 41 CHAPTER III JORGE SEMEDO DE MATOS Entre Macau e Timor: as rotas do comércio marítimo português, nos séculos xvi e XVII ................................................................................ 56 SECTION 2： CONTACTS AND PERCEPTIONS： WRITING, PUBLISHING AND EXHIBITING CHAPTER IV PASCALE GIRARD Describing Space: Portuguese and Chinese Approaches in Relations Linked to Tomé Piress Diplomatic Mission to China (1517-1524) .............................. 89 5
CHAPTER V RODERICH PIAK Hunting with Birds of Prey in the Peregrinaçãff. lerms and Translations ........................ 112 CHAPTER VI RUI MANUEL LOUREIRO Impressions of China in the Itinerário of Jan Huygen van Linschoten ...................... 135 CHAPTER VII MARÍLIA DOS SANTOS LOPES Ibwards a Global Culture of Things. Chinese Objects at German Courts (16th-18th centuries) ............................................................................................. 150 SECTION 3： MACAU, NETWORKS AND ARCHIVAL MATERIALS CHAPTER VIII ELSA PENALVA Os jurubaças-intérpretes Miguel Monteiro, Simâo Coelho e a formalização de um corpo jurídico Ming para Macau (1612-1632) ....................................... 175 CHAPTER IX NOÊL GOIVERS Antoine Thomas in Macau (1682-1685) and His Role in the Communication between Europe and China................................................................................... 229 CHAPTER X HELENE IEONG Marine Civilization and Its Impacts on Religious Documentary Heritages in M a c a u .................................................................................................................. 248 CHAPTER XI PASCALE GIRARD Le manuscript B 2729 de la Hispanic Society de New York attribué au jésuite Adriano de Las Cortes (1580-1629) : analyse critique d'un document ............ 267 6
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS François Gipouloux (Emeritus Research Director, National Centre for Scientific Research, [CNRS] France), is a senior associate researcher at the Collège d' Études Mondiales. He has worked twenty years in Asia (Peking, Tokyo, Hong Kong). His research covers the dynamics of urbanisation in China and the comparative analysis of econo- mic institutions and Business practices in Europe and Asia from the 16th to the 21st century. His recent publications include: Elusive capital: Merchant Networks, Economic Institutions and Business Practices in Late Imperial China (2022), Chinas Urban Century (2015), and The Asian Mediterranean (2011) (also translated in Korean and Chinese). James K. Chin has taught at different universities, including Xiamen University in China, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Hong Kong, and currently is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences of Zhejiang University. His research interests include history of maritime Asia, Chinese Overseas and transnational immigration. He has published ninety Journal articles and book chapters, in addition to five books in English, such as China and Southeast Asia: Historical Interactions (2019), Navigational Routes o f Imperial China (2016) and Mapping Ming Chinas Maritime World (2015). Jorge Semedo de Matos is a navy officer with the grade of Commander, Professor at the Portuguese Naval Academy, and Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon. He obtained a PhD in the History of Portuguese Expansion, and is currently a researcher at the Centre for History at the University of Lisbon, and at the Portuguese Naval Centre. He is a member emeritus of the Maritime Aca- demy and associated member of the Portuguese Academy of History. He authored 7
the book Roteiros e rotas portuguesas do Oriente, séculos X V I e X V II (2018), which was awarded the prize "Almirante Sarmento Rodrigues-2017M. He has produced more than one hundred articles and book chapters, mostly on early-modern His- tory, the History of Nauúcal Science, and Maritime History. Pascale Girard is currentiy Associate Professor of early-modern History at the University Gustave Eiffel (France). Her research interests focus on Catholic missions in China and cultural exchanges between Europe and China in the 16th—18th centuries. She is the author of Le voyage en Chine d^Adriano de las Cortes SJ. (1625) (2001), Os religiosos ocidentais na China na época moderna. Ensaio de análise textual comparada (1999), and Les religieux occidentaux en Chine à répoque moderne: essai d^analyse textuelle comparée (2000); and she has co-authored with João Viegas Prisonniers de UEmpire Céleste. Le désastre de la première ambassade por- tugaise en Chine: récits et témoignages portugais et chinois (1517-1524) (2013). Roderich Ptak holds a Master of Economics from the University of Guelph, Canada; Dr. phil. and habil. degrees in Sinology from the University of Heidelberg; in 1986 was appoin- ted temporary Professor of Sinology, Heidelberg; in 1991 Heisenberg scholar, and thereafter Professor of Chinese Studies in Germersheim, University of Mainz; and since 1994 he has been Chair of Chinese Studies, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich. He is the author of many books and articles on Chinese maritime history, Macau history, historical geography, tradicional Chinese zoology, and Chinese literature (see www.sinologie.lmu.de). Recent publications include (with Shi Ping 时平 as ed.) Studies on the Sanbao taijian Xiyangji tongsu yanyí Vòl. 3 / Sanbao taijian Xiyang ji tongsu yanyi zhiyanjiu. Di san j i 《三宝太监西洋记通俗演义》 之研究.第三集(2020); Putake Aomenshiyu haiyangshi lunji普塔克澳门史与海 洋史论集，Collection of articles translated by Zhao Dianhong 赵殿红，Cai Jiehua 蔡洁华 et al. (2018); and (with Hu Baozhu 胡保柱)The Earliest Extant Bird List ofHainan: An Annotated Translation o f the Avian Section in Qiongtai zhi (2015). Rui Manuel Loureiro holds a PhD in History from the University of Lisbon. He is currently a Professor at the Instituto Superior Manuel Teixeira Gomes, in Portimão, and a Researcher at the CHAM - Centre for the Humanities, at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa/ University of Azores. He is still a member of the Maritime Academy. He speciali- zed in the history of Iberian contacts with the Asian world in the 16th and 17th centuries, having published over a hundred academic works (including books, book chapters, articles in scientific journals, Communications in conference proceedings, 8
etc.). His most recent publications include an edition of índias Itinerary by Land 切 Portugal, by António Tenreiro (2021), the catalog of the exhibition On Demand from the Fernão de Magalhães library (2019) and a new edition of the Suma Oriental by Tomé Pires (2017). Marília dos Santos Lopes teaches History at the School of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon. Her publications include Things on the move. Dinge unterwegs. Objects in Early M o d e m Cultural Transfer (ed. with Ulrike Gleixner, 2021); À Volta da Viagem (ed. with Luísa Santos, 2021); Renaissance Craftsmen and Humanistic Scholars. Circulation ofKnowledge between Portugal and Germany (ed. with Thomas Horst and Henrique Leitão, 2017); Writing N e w Worlds. The Cultural Dynamics of Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (2016); Identidade em viagem. Para uma história da cultura portuguesa (2015); Zo cheiro desta canela. Notas para a história de uma especiaria rara (2002); Wonderful things never yet seen. Towards an Iconografy of the Discoveries (1998) and Afrika. Eine neue Welt in deutschen Schriften Zes 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (1992). Elsa Penalva is a Researcher at C H A M - Centre for the Humanities, at Universidade N O V A de Lisboa/University of Azores. Among her main works are Assertividade e Poder em Macau: o caso de Dona Catarina de Noronha (c.1640—1696) (2020), Mercadores, Jesuítas e Jurubaças (1600-1627) (2015), Les Clarisses à Macau au I7e Siècle: Foi, Pouvoir et Liberte (2012), and Mulheres e m M a c a u — Donas Honradas, Mulheres Livres e Escravas (2011) (awarded the Academia da História/Fundaçâo Calouste Gulbenkian, História da Presença Portuguesa no Mundo 2012 Prize). Noêl Golvers studied Classical philology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He obtained his PhD on Latin and Italic linguistics in 1984. His research thereafter has focused on the Jesuit mission in China in the 17th-early 18th century, especially on its cultural and scientific aspects, and the role of the Jesuits in the transmission of Science between Europe and China, on which he published extensively, for example, on Jesuit libraries in China {Libraries of Western Learningfor China, 3 vols., 2012-2015); on astronomy and mathematics (4 vols. on Ferdinand Verbiest and Antoine Thomas, 1993, 2003, 2009, 2017), medicine, botany, and pharmacology (1 vol. on Johann Schreck lerrentius, 2020). He is member of several academic institutions (Aca- démie Internationale cThistoire des Sciences) and active collaborator of scholarly projects in Belgium (KU Leuven), Italy (Fondazione Intorcettiana) and Portugal ( C H A M - U N L / U A ；Res Sinicae FLUL; CCCM; Coimbra). 9
Helen H.K. leong obtained a PhD of Library Science from the Peking University in 2002 and fini- shed the Postdoctoral in the Institute of Scientific & lechnical Information of China in 2005. She is the Principal Advisor of Senior Technician in the Macao Foundation, and mainly works for Macau Memory Project, and historical and cultural activities. She is also teaching two Master Programs about Macau History Heritages, and Macau in China History, at the University of Macau. She has pub- lished books and more than hundreds of papers about information management, cultural heritages, and documentary heritages, such as: “Macau Pou Chai Templo (Kun Iam lòng)" (2019), “Macau Experiences on Documentation and China- -West cultural heritages after Handover to China” (2019), and “Macau Kung Tak Lam lemplew (2017). Besides, she has been organizing the nominations of Macau documentary to be inscribed to UNESCO MOWCAP registers. 10
INTRODUCTION Carmen Amado Mendes President of CCCM IAssociate Professor, University of Coimbra Isabel Murta Pina Senior Researcher, CCCM This volume, which inaugurates one of the new CCCM book series, devoted to historical studies, consists of the compilation of eleven chapters by ten authors. The volume is focused on maritime East Asia, Macau, intercultural contacts and other aspects that have China and the Sea as their central axes. These chapters span a temporal are that extends, for the most part, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while in some cases they also encompass the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It can thus be stated that they cover the late-Ming and Qing dynasties. Due to the thematic diversity of the contributions, this volume is organized in three sections. The first section is titled 'Chinese Maritime Trade, Entrepreneurs, and Routes\ the second 'Contacts and Perceptions: Wiriting, Publishing and Exhib- iting', and the third 'Macau, Networks and Archival Materials. The first section opens with a study by François Gipouloux, focusing on the expansion of maritime trade during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Directly from the title itsel£ the author questions why long-term trade organizations were so problematic in the Chinese case. Gipouloux recognizes that this is not an easy question to answer, which most likely contributed to few studies being carried out on Chinese economic institutions and Business practices in the pre-contemporary period. As could be expecced from an author with Gipoulouxs background, this topic is approached from a comparative perspective to the Mediterranean world. Evolution on one hand and conservatism on the other, commenda and gongsiy the commander of the ship responsible for the cargo and the numerous passengers/ merchants, the commercial relations and the family dependency networks, the support of the State and the lack of it all contribute to accounting for contrasting realities, and help to explain the different paths or evolutionary lines that led, in 11
the Chinese case, to delay the emergence of the first companies, in the strict sense, to the end of the nineteenth century. The institutionalisation of efficient economic practices, risk sharing and Business expansion that occurred in the Mediterranean World was superseded, in the Chinese case until the nineteenth century, by the importance of the continuity of the family, rather than the Business itselE Family and Business in the diaspora, more specifically in the Malay Península/ Western Pacific, is the subject of the next contribution, authored by James Chin. It offers an historical perspective of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs, who in the beginning were mainly Hokkien from south Fujian and Teochews from eastern Guangdong. The author focuses on five families (Koh, Khaw, Chang, Seah and Tan) and their businesses, between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centu- ries. Chin aims to explore the factors that underpinned the success of these entre- preneurs in an environment that was alien to them. In other words, he attempts to understand which strategies were used by these families to adapt and make their commercial progress possible. Through the five families, the author demonstrates the key role of three factors. Firstly, the patronage of people with both political and economic influence; secondly, the strategy of arranged marriages, pursuing a customary Business practice in tradicional Chinese society for the establishment of stable relationships of trust, which included the Chinese immigrant community and also local elites; and finally, the ethnic networks associated with secret socie- ties, with Chin emphasising the silently-expanded，nature of the Chinese ethnic network abroad. The following chapter by Jorge Semedo de Matos, written in Portuguese, focuses on the Portuguese presence in Asia, and specifically on their maritime trade routes, east of Malacca, with the Chinese Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author analyses the axes of Portuguese trade with China and explores the main navigation routes that supported it, as well as the adjustments that time and circumstances imposed. In addition to the routes between Malacca and China, the route between Macau and Manila, and the impact caused by the end of the Iberian Union are also considered. Macau and Manila, two cities that have been formally hostile since then, given the confluence of their commercial interests, will, however, continue, according to Semedo de Matos, to meet in Macassar, in the heart of the Indonesian archipelago. The author presents the intensification of the voyages between the two cities, branched off to Timor to purchase white sandalwood. It is precisely the route between Macau and Timor that the author highlights in his title, and whose analysis he presents to close his chapter. The second section, “Contacts and Perceptions: Writing, Publishing and Exhibiting”，begins with a study by Pascale Girard on the first Portuguese embassy to China, between 1517 and 1524, led byTomé Pires. According to contemporary Chinese sources, the embassy was seen as an invasion of China by the Folangji, 12
a people from a mysterious country, not listed among Ming tributary States, and where children were devoured. Making use of a set of European and Chinese doc- uments related to this embassy which Girard compiled and edited in 2013,1 she introduces us, in a comparative perspective, to the issues of geography in Europe and China, and perceptions of space. What are the views of the space or country of the other that emerge in these documents? What parameters determine one set of interpretations and descriptions in one case, and others in another? How is the process of knowledge of space constituted? Is it possible to observe approaches with a pre-scientific dimension? What are the distinctions and affinities between the two sets of documents? These are some of the questions that Girard raises throughout her chapter, and to which she provides answers. The perceptions and knowledge observed in the two sets of documents examined by Girard are influenced, as she shows, by a greater or lesser institutionalisation of their authors; by a greater or lesser authority; and by a greater or lesser degree of rupture with texts and prior knowledge, while also depending on the authors social and professional status. Furthermore, they are guided by concerns and/or reflections of a military scope (both in terms of defence and conquest of territory). It is particularly interesting to note that, on both sides, there are examples of pre-scientific approaches, both by the geographer Gu Yanwu 候直炎武 and by the Portuguese prisoner Vasco Calvo. Gu Yanwu due to the exhaustive verification of documentation carried out in its quest for the country of the Folangi\ and the second owing to inquiries conducted in the field using Chinese books and interpreters. Furthermore, it is precisely through the work developed by Calvo that Girard establishes the transmission of geographical knowledge from China to Europe one hundred years earlier than has previously been thought. 1 Pascale and Viegas 2013. 2 Ptak 2011; Ptak and Hu 2015. In the following three contributions, Roderich Ptak, Rui Loureiro and Marília dos Santos Lopes address the extremely favourable image of China prevalent in Europe during the early modem period and the prominent role of Portuguese/ Iberian mediation. Their analysis focuses either on books and objects. In his contribution to this volume, Roderich Ptak revisits a work that he is very familiar with, the Peregrinação of Fernâo Mendes Pinto, and explores a topic he has been interested in recent years, namely birds of prey.2 Ptak examines the information retrieved from Mendes Pintos book about hawks, goshawks, and eagles, and the hunting carried out with them in China, Japan and Chiang Mai (northern Thailand). The author shows that this topic is dealt with in a similar way to other themes in Peregrinação, a work well-known for masterfuily mixing reality and fiction. According to Ptak, it is unlikely that Mendes Pinto has observed 13
birds of prey or falconers in Ming China, or even consulted Chinese sources that mention this common hunting technique in the Yuan period. Thus, he argues that including such Information could lie in the pretence of associating an activity with China that enjoyed prestige in Europe. By this, Mendes Pinto was able to please his audience and confirm the positive image of China and Japan dominant in Portugal and Europe. In this matter (as in others), Mendes Pinto clashes with European accounts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where such hunting was associated with the Islamic sphere and índia, instead of China and Japan. Since the original manuscript of Peregrinação is not available and, therefore, it is impossible to assess the dififerences in comparison to the edition princeps of 1614, Ptak ends his analysis by casting an intriguing doubt (legitimised by the work of authors such as Roger Chartier3). What if the references to falconry and birds of prey did not originate with Mendes Pinto but with the editor, who saw them as marketable> elements? 3 More recendy, see Chartier 2014. 4 Loureiro 1997. This section continues with a contribution by Rui Loureiro that falis within the framework of the dissemination of knowledge about China in sixteenth century Europe - a topic on which the author has already produced a vast and recognized body of work. In this chapter, Loureiro returns to a non-Portuguese writer, the Dutch traveller Jan Huygen van Linschoten, author of the Itinerário, first published in Amsterdam by the mid-1590s, that Loureiro edited in 1997.4 The contributor explores the “impressions” of China that exist in the account of Linschotens adven- turous journeys, through textual Information, illustrations, and maps. Similar to other authors who wrote about China, Linschoten never visited the country, and his information was based on Portuguese and Spanish accounts. Having lived in Portugal and índia during the Iberian Union, he had access to many manuscripts and printed materiais about China, both in Portuguese and Spanish. Among these sources, one well-known book by Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza stands out, as identi- fied by Loureiro. Like Mendes Pinto, the Dutch traveller also established associations or affinities between Europe and China with the purpose of giving the Ming Empire a prominent place on an eventual civilizational scale, as highlighted by Loureiro. Plus, as Ptak has pinpointed in the previous chapter, it was a way to show that the “Other” was not so different from the "Self”. Achieving a remarkable editorial suc- cess, the Itinerário and two other books by Linschoten, published simultaneously, contributed in Europe to the broad circulation of news from China of Iberian origin. However, these accounts, collected on the Chinese shores, were then on the verge of becoming out of date, following the presence of the Jesuit missionaries in mainland China, which resulted in a ' revolution, in European knowledge about China. 14
From the creation and circulation of textual knowledge about China, we move on to the circulation of Chinese material culture, which Marília dos Santos Lopes examines in her study, that covers a long period that extends from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Here, once again, a very positive image of China stands out, along with the crucial role of the Portuguese at the early stage. While Loureiro explores a Dutch travellers accounts, Lopes transports us to the Portuguese and (especially) Holy Roman Empire court circles. Thus, leading us through the world of Iberian and German elites, who were avid consumers of Chinese commodities, particular emphasis is given by Lopes to porcelain. Fascination, curiosity, changes in patterns of taste and consumption, forms of appropriation and instrumentaliza- tion of objects, specifically as strategies for affirming status and power, forms of exhibition, in addition to the conceptual issues related to the importance of the history of objects (i.e. the “power of things”)in historical analysis and the relation- ship between global history and material culture, constitute a comprehensive set of topics and issues addressed by the author. The third section, entitled “Macau, Networks and Archival Materials”，focuses mainly on Macau and the networks of interpreters, Jesuits and knowledge, both scientific and academic, in addition to documents and archival materiais, whether real or forged. In her study, Elsa Penalva presents, in Portuguese, a case study on Macau and the networks of interpreters (the so-called jurubaças or línguas} pursu- ing a topic that she has explored extensively in recent years. In an essay that takes us back to the gongsi and afíiliations already analysed by Gipouloux in this volume, Penalva focuses on the case of two interpreters working in Macau, namely Simâo Coelho and his father Miguel Monteiro. Both belonged to a lineage of interpreters from Fujian. They were associated with Portuguese merchants and Jesuits who had settled in Macau, and involved in the Portuguese-Sino-Japanese mercantile networks operating between Goa and Japan. In a universe where the Fujianese gained prominence, Penalva also considers other actors, such as the traders and/ or pirate leaders Li Dan 李旦，Li Guozhu 李阈助 and Zheng Zhilong 喷K芝青鼠 showing their connections with Macau. Focusing on the years between 1612 and 1632, Penalva addresses both the phase of reinforcement of Chinese regulatory pressure on Macau (reflected in the 1616 and 1617 regulations), and negative perceptions of Fujianese individuais involved with foreigners, as well as the phase that followed, which was marked by the growing influence, and a more favourable image, of the group of interpreters from Fujian. Prominently, they achieved a significant role in the mediation between Macaiís Senate and the authorities in Canton and Peking. Simâo Coelho, a central figure in this chapter, is a telling example of this evolution. Metamor- phizing from being an outlaw, he became an important intermediary, participating by 1623 in the military aid of Macau to the Ming dynasty, and soon thereafter 15
was appointed as the main língua of the city in the Regiment of 1627, charged with negotiating with the Chinese authorities. Yet, his transformation was not as significant as that of Zheng Zhilong, from outlaw to Ming official.5 5 Hang 2016, 51. The section continues with the contribution of Noèl Golvers, in which he analyses the position of Macau (specifically, the Jesuit College of Madre de Deus)y regarding scientific and academic exchange between Asia and Europe. Using the extant documental corpus of the Belgian Jesuit Antoine Thomas (Chinese name: Anduo 安多，1644—1709) from the three years he lived in Macau between 1682 and 1685, Golvers shows that the Macau College was already at the centre of a communication and exchange network. This network extended from China (notably Peking), via Siam and Batavia, to Goa and Europe (specifically, Paris, Rome or Antwerp). During these years, it is possible to observe, through Thomas' correspondence, the arrival at the College of the most recent works on astronomy and mathematics published in Europe, and also of up-to-date scientific journals and more accurate telescope lenses which Thomas had commissioned from their agents and contacts in Europe. In the opposite direction, the resuks of astronomi- cal observations made by Thomas himself in Macau, or by his confreres in Peking, were being dispatched, and discussed in Paris in the sessions of the Académie des Sciences, During these three years, based on the materiais Thomas had access to in Macau, information also circulated in other areas in which he was active. Such was the case of nautical cartography, naturalia，or pharmacopoeia, and apologetic treatises that he penned, and sent to Goa, and thence to Europe. The study by Helene leong introduces us to the efforts being made in Macau in modem times to promote its religious documental heritage. In a territory marked, as the author States, by “marine civilization”，where multiple religious cultures coex- isted, namely Catholic and Buddhist, a unique documental corpus has survived, and is kept at different Macanese archives. This collection has been registered in UNESCO programmes, namely Memory o f the World, with the aim of preserving and disseminating Macaus rich documental heritage. The volume closes with a second contribution by Pascale Girard, in French, in which she analyses a document attributed to an author with whom she is very well acquainted, the Jesuit Adriano de las Cortes, who penned a vibrant account on his return to Manila after his visit to China in 1625. Having already produced a criticai (and translated) edition of Cortes' original manuscript, which is preserved in the British Library (Ms. Sloan 1005), here Girard thoroughly examines another manuscript found in the Hispanic Society of New York collection to verify the authenticity of this document, which has only recently become known. Somewhat 16
similarly to a detective, the contributor has undertaken exhaustive research, carried out from different perspectives, ranging from the materiality of the document, to its spelling, language, and style, as well as firom sources ranging from speeches to engravings, and its additions to the London manuscript. Step by step, Girard reveals the numerous inconsistencies that exist in the document, dismantling with unquestionable (and fascinating) skill and expertise the authenticity claimed by the proprietary institution. In 2018, the owner even sought to legitimise the document by including it in the exhibition Tesoros de la Hispanic Society. Demonstrating that it is a recently forged document, Girard denounces the current existence of a thriving market for falsified documents. After this summary presentation, it is time to give the floor to the authors, but not before expressing our gratitude for their contribution to this volume. 17
Bibliography Chartier, Roger. 2014. The Authors Hand and the Printers Mind. Cambridge- -Malden: Polity Press. Girard, Pascale (ed.). 2001. Le voyage en Chine d^Adriano de las Cortes S.J. (1625). Paris: Chandeigne. Girard, Pascale and Viegas, João Viegas. 2013. Prisonniers de Vempire céleste - Le desastre de la première ambassade portugaise en Chine (1517-1524). Récits & témoignages portugais et chinois. Paris: Chandeigne. Hang Xing. 2016. Conflict and Commerce in Maritime EastAsia. The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modem World, c. 1620-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loureiro, Rui (ed.). 1997. Itinerário, Viagem o〃 Navegação 2e Jan Huygen van Linschoten para as índias Orientais ou Portuguesas. Lisbon: CNCDP Ptak, Roderich and Hu Baozhu. 2015. The Earliest Extant Bird List ofHainan. An Annotated Translation o f the Avian Section in Qiongtai zhi. Wiesbaden-Lisbon: Harrassowitz Verlag-CCCM. Ptak, Roderich. 2011. Birds and Beasts in Chinese Texts and Trade. Lectures related to South China and the Overseas World. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 18
This volume, which inaugurates one of the new CCCM book series, devoted to historical studies, consists of the compilation of eleven chapters by ten authors. The volume is focused on maritime East Asia, Macau, intercultural contacts and other aspects that have China and the Sea as their central axes. These chapters span a temporal arc that extends, for the most part, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while in some cases they also encompass the nineteenth century and early twentieth century It can thus be stated that they cover the late-Ming and Qing dynasties. Due to the thematic diversity of the contributions, this volume is organized in three sections. The first section is titled 'Chinese Maritime Trade, Entrepreneurs, and Routes\ the second 4Contacts and Perceptions: Writing, Publishing and Exhibiting,, and the third 'Macau, Networks and Archival Materials5. Historical Studies Series
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