Making Impressions the Adaptation of a Portuguese Family to Hong Kong
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Making Impressions The adaptation of a Portuguese family to Hong Kong, 1700-1950 Stuart Braga A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University October 2012 i Appendices Population 5. Population of Macau, 1557-1960 485 6. The Portuguese Population of Hong Kong 491 Three significant books 7. Anders Ljungstedt, An historical sketch of the Portuguese settlements in China and of the Roman Catholic Church, 1836 499 8. A book burning in Macau: suppression of Historic Macao, 1929 513 9. J.P. Braga, The Portuguese in Hongkong and China, 1944 525 J.P. Braga – facets of his life 10. Part 1 – Olive Braga – ‘The peace of Christ garrisoning her heart’ 539 Part 2 – José Pedro Braga – ‘Apologia pro vita sua’ 541 11. J.P. Braga, Record of public service and directorships 545 12. Hong Kong Legislative Council: growth in unofficial membership 551 13. J.P. Braga and the Imperial Honours system 553 Miscellaneous 14. Malacca and Macau 559 15. Noronha & Co’s finest book 565 16. Functus Officio – a questionable decision: the sentencing of J.M. Braga, 1919 567 17. Anarchy in Kowloon, 11-12 December 1941 571 18. Sir Robert Ho Tung and the Braga family 583 19. The Braga family leave Hong Kong, 1946-1998 591 20. Fr Joaquim Gonçalves and printing in Macau 623 21. Glossary of Chinese names 633 483 484 Appendix 1 Population of Macau 1557-1960 The absence of any statistical evidence for the population of Macau until the first census in 1910 means that a variety of secondary sources has to be considered; ‘relied on’ would not be a suitable term. The overall impression is clear enough. After their successful early years, the Portuguese population of Macau hung on grimly, generally declining during the seventeenth century but recovering strongly during the eighteenth century. Relatively stable numbers in the nineteenth century suggest successive waves of emigration as people sought a better life in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Unlike the Macanese, few of the Chinese then regarded Macau as their heung ha, their home. The Chinese population came and went as opportunity offered. A few sources indicate the non-Portuguese European population. These are shown as ‘others’. They are only significant in the 1830s and between 1942 and 1945. As shown in Chapter 12 there was only a hazy differentiation between British refugees in Macau and Hong Kong Portuguese who also managed to escape. J.M. Braga, who studied the history of Macau quite intensively, wrote an essay of 13 quarto pages in typescript on the population of Macau.1 It discussed the ethnic origin of the Macanese people, but did not include any statistics. This suggests that he regarded it as an impossible task. Therefore the following table can at best provide only a rough idea. Date Portuguese Chinese Others Total Source Notes 1557 400 A 1561 500-600 A 1582 1,000 A 1600 3,500 A 1621 700-800 10,000 A 1635 850 25,000 A 1644 44,000 G 1662 Note 1 1700 20,500 A 1719 More than Note 1 10,000 (a) 1745 5,212 About 13,000 G 8,000 1 J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/7.3/6. 485 Date Portuguese Chinese Others Total Source Notes 1777 6,000 A 1809 22 E 1818 5,000 A 1821 4,557 40 I 1822 4,315 40,000 E, I 1824 5,093 35 I 1830 4,628 30,000 86 34,628 B 1834 145 Note 2 1835 4,804 20,000 ca. 30,000 C, E 1839 5,601 350 E Note 3 1845 4,000 A Note 4 1849 Note 5 1874 4,476 53,582 68,086 I Note 6 1879 4,476 63,262 E,F 1896 3,898 74,568 161 E 1897 3,898 74,627 78,706 H 1910 3,601 71,021 244 74,877 E 1920 3,816 79,807 361 83,984 E 1937 150,000 1939 4,624 239,803 761 245,194 E 1942-1945 10,000 up to 500,000 Note 7 1950 4,066 183,105 601 187,772 E 1960 7,467 160,764 561 168,299 E Note 8 Sources: A. M. Teixeira, Os Macaenses, Macau, Centro de Informação e Turismo, 1965, pp. 34-39. Teixeira used a variety of sources to compile his list. No records were extant in Macau; therefore all his sources were travellers to Macau, hazarding a rough guess at the population. They included the Dutch voyager J.P. Cohen (1621), and the Jesuit fathers Cardim (1644) and P.F. Sousa (1700). These priests were mainly concerned to record numbers of baptised Christians (Cristãos), whether Portuguese, mestiços or Chinese Christians. The clerics referred to any others, if at all, as gentiles (gentios). Thus it is difficult to determine whether those counted as Portuguese include Chinese Christians as well. Slaves were sometimes mentioned, but seldom counted. It appears that the government of Macau had only a vague notion of the size of the Chinese population, and did not concern itself with them. B. Chinese Repository, vol. 3, no. 7, November 1834, pp. 292, 303. The figure of 4,628 in 1830 included 800 or 900 slaves and 300 soldiers. Both groups were Africans. 486 C. O Macaista Imparcial. 1836-1837 Typescript copy in the J.M. Braga collection, National Library of Australia MS 4362, p. 12. This article copied from the newspaper listed men and women by age in separate groups in 1835 in each of the three ecclesiastical parishes of Macau. For both sexes, the median age was 15 to 30. Life was short in this place; there were only 41 males and 139 females over 60. No figures for Chinese were given. Neither the government nor the church was in a position to count this large group. Had they tried, the Casa Branca mandarin would probably have forbidden it. D. A. Ljungstedt, An historical sketch of the Portuguese settlements in China, p. 21. E. J. Crouch-Smith et al., Macau Protestant Chapel, a short history, Appendix A, pp. 71-72. The authors of this carefully researched book apparently decided to publish material not readily available elsewhere. The sources used include H.B. Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, 1635-1834 and census figures from 1910 onwards. F. Chinese Recorder 1889, p. 85, cited by J.M. Braga, notes in MS 4300/5.2. G. Figures compiled from parish registers by a Franciscan friar, José de Jesus Maria, from parish registers examined during a sojourn in Macau from 1742 to 1745 and included in a manuscript entitled Azia Sinica e Japonica. This was seen by C.R. Boxer and quoted in Fidalgos in the Far East, p. 256. H. J.D. Ball, Macao, the Holy City, 1905. 487 I. José de Aquino Guimarães e Freitas, Memoria sobre Macáo, Coimbra, 1828. An artillery officer and therefore precise in his calculations, Guimarães e Freitas provided a population table, describing it as Capitulo XI, Chapter XI, reproduced here. The figures evidently came from the registers of the three parishes, Sé (the cathedral), S. Lourenço and S. António. He gave the figures for the cristão population: i.e. baptised Catholics. This necessarily includes Chinese Christians and excludes Protestants, then numbering about forty. Chinese Christians would have been few. The three parishes were within the city walls; the Chinese settlements were outside. 488 Notes: 1. 1662 was considered Macau’s worst year. An anti-Qing uprising in Guangdong (Kwangtung) province led to an order that the coastline be evacuated. The Chinese population of Macau fled in a body, and the border was closed for three months. Many people starved to death, but figures are unknown. D. F. Lach, and E. J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe: A Century of Advance: East Asia, p. 1697. Note 1(a) ‘We have more than ten thousand mouths to provide for’ (Address from the Macau Senado to the Kangsi Emperor, 1719. See Chapter 4, p. 110). 2. 1834 ‘From a tabular statement by the curates of the three parish churches of Macao, the population was: Whites 3,893; Black slaves 1,300; Chinese about 30,000. Among this number only some 77 were born in Portugal and in its dominions. Neither they nor any other vassals are allowed to quit Macao but by a previous consent of Government. The military force amounted to 240 men, with corresponding officers, with 130 guns mounted on the fortifications.’ Chinese Recorder, 1888, p. 35, cited by J.M. Braga, notes in MS 4300/5.2. 3. All British were evacuated from Macau on 26 August 1839. According to R Hutcheon, Chinnery, the man and the legend, p. 118, 2,000 lived for several months on vessels moored in Hong Kong harbour. This figure seems exaggerated, and is at variance with the fairly precise figures given by H.B. Morse, though it should be noted that Morse’s sources were the records of the East India Company, which ceased operations in China in 1834. 4. About 1,000 Portuguese died in a smallpox epidemic in 1842-1843, reducing their numbers to about 4,000. 5. The panic following the murder in Macau of Governor Amaral in 1849 led to the flight of some hundreds of people to Hong Kong. Sir George Bonham to Earl Grey, R.L. Jarman, Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841- 1941, vol. 1, pp. 95, 121, 148. Macanese sources are silent about this exodus. 6. The Great Typhoon of 1874 devastated much of Macau and killed some 5,000 people, mainly Chinese fisher-folk.