| Macau has always been a place inhabited by different nationalities since its opening. Peoplefrom all over the world--European merchants, navigators and missionaries with their slaves takenfrom Africa, India, Malacca and Timor, together with those Christians, businessmen and refugeesfrom China and Japan--lived together on this small peninsula with an area of about3squarekilometers, making Macau a platform of multicultural communication. Historical populationdistribution patterns have geographical bases, and demonstrate temporal and spatial characteristics.From the horizons of historical geography, this paper does a preliminary study of several issues onhistorical population geography of Macau in Ming and Qing Dynasties (1557-1911).This paper consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. As major structure of thework, the following chapters will be discussed in body. In Chapter1, by analysis of related archivalmaterials on historical population of Macau area, the variation of the size of population can bedivided into three periods, namely the periods of Rapid Growth, Fluctuations and Stagnation, eachof them with its own characteristics. Chapter2elaborates on the change of population distributionpattern of two parts of Macau Area, the peninsula and the offshore islands, through the data fromarchives, historical maps and census records. Chapter3mainly deals with the composition ofpopulation from both natural and social aspects, which can be subdivided into composition of sex,age, marriage and family.Through the research on the variation of the size, the change of distribution pattern andcomposition of population, the paper resumes the spatial distribution of population in differenthistorical periods, and probes into the characteristics of the composition of population in Macau area,in order to supplement the study on population geography of Macau, and to provide references to theconstruction and urban planning for the Special Administrative Region. |
