On The Macanese As An Ethnic Group

The unique historical conditions of Macao have determined the fact that Macao has been bound to move from being a trade port to being a platform for cultural exchanges between China and its foreign counterparts. In the meeting of Chinese and Western cultures, many local descendants of the Portuguese have themselves become receivers of the Chinese culture, as well as the disseminators of Western cultures. They have been the successors proper of a bi-cultural heritage, and have thus been the de facto bonds between two entirely different worlds.In the first half of the century following their arrival in the Occident, the Portuguese were constantly on the move in the vast areas between India and the Molucas archipelagos. The male-dominated Portuguese have, through many generations of co-habitation with their host ethnic groups in Asia, become detached from their original and become a distinct new ethnic group of Asian-Portuguese descendants. The colonies they set up in those areas and the following migrations thereto have given vital rise to the Macaense's coming into being. Those homo novus were the very ancestors of most of the people known as the "Portuguese in Macao", who had came to settle in Macao in the mid-sixteenth century, and hence come to be known as the Macaense.The aim of this paper is to look into how the Macaense as an ethnic group has come into being and along up to now, and its contributions in Macao's history. The significance of this research lies in that it is introduces the people in mainland China to get to know about the Macaense, as the initiation of an all-round research into Macao's history, and as a helpful reference for policy-making by the government, and for the ethnogenic research on the Macaense. It facilitates an understanding of the historical migration of the Macaense and their layout in various parts of the world. The paper consists of four parts:Chapter 1 - the coming into being of the Macaense - focuses on how the Portuguese and the Asian peoples have become mixed and given rise to the generation of the Macaense ethnic group, and how that particular group has ascended through the course of more than four centuries, tracing the political contexts set by the Portuguese royal regime, and the original ethnic layout at the earliest stages of Macao's founding, and the ethnogenic influences the Macaense have received in different times of Macao's history. Emphasis has been put on the multi-source character of the Macaense in ethnogenic terms. It is pointed out that since the early days of Macao, the great majority of the so-called Macaense have been descendants of multiethnic families. A process in which the role of the Chinese is not to be neglected.Chapter 2 - the demographic status of the Macaense and its heterogeneousethnicity - looks at the demographic trend of the Macaense based on various historical data, both Chinese and foreign. Analysis is made here of the changes in the population in different times, so is comparison made of the demographic data gathered from related literature. Here a glimpse is made of the causes of such heterogeneous ethnicity, of how Chinese families were assimilated into the Macaense ones, the reasons and process of that changing ethnicity. Introductions from other European ethnic groups, and the intra-marriage among the Macaense and its causes, etc., are also discussed. What is new here is the research into the Macaense's activities in Southeast Asia and Insulindia and Sunda around the incorporation of Macao, and the findings that point to a population of the Macaense of much more than several hundred, a figure that has long been upheld.Chapter 3 - A ethnic group in vicissitude and on the move - looks at two issues which have long been neglected by the inland history academia, namely, the contributions of the Macaense to the founding and development of Hong Kong, and the migration of Portuguese descendants to Shanghai after the Opium War, with an analysis of the causes leading to their migration to those two places. It points out that the Macaense as an et...