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The Marchandy also of Portugal
By divers lands turne into sale.
Portugalers with us have trouth in hand:
Whose Marchandy commeth much into England.
They ben our friends, with their commodities,
And wee English passen into their countrees.
“Libel of English policie, exhorting all England to keepe the sea”
[c.1436], in Richard Hakluyt, Voyages in Eight Volumes,
vol. 1, 1962, p. 178
This study sets out to present a history of the British presence, at first in the Indian Ocean, pursuing the Portuguese route, and later, in the Far East, in Macau, from 1635 to 1793, as also in Japan (Hirado) from 1613 to 1623, from where the English attempted unsuccessfully to set up direct trade links with China. The British presence in Macau stemmed from Elizabethan interest in Portuguese profit-making in the East Indies, and began with the arrival in 1635 of the first English vessel, the London, in Macau. I end my study with the year 1793, the date of the first British embassy to China led by Lord Macartney, which constituted Britain’s first, albeit diplomatically fruitless, attempt to institutionalise relations between the two countries. I therefore present the most representative episodes of the first two hundred years of the British presence in Macau, a presence which has left its mark, still visible today, on the humanised face of the city, notably in the ancient Protestant cemetery and chapel. In both Portuguese and Anglophone documents, mainly those of the nineteenth century, references were made to other British haunts in the city, notably the English Tavern (Hotel),1Closethe British Museum (the first museum to open its doors in China, 1829–1834, as I have recently shown)2Close and the East India Company (EIC) Library.3Close Even before the English started to send trading expeditions to Amoy and to Formosa, travelling to China meant putting in at the port of Macau, so these two latter place-names became synonymous by a synecdochical process. In fact, Thomas Naish’s 1731 report to London advises every vessel en route to Amoy to stop off in the enclave, putting in at Taipa for protection against typhoons and to take in supplies,4Close hence testifying to the strategic value of the City of the Holy Name of God of Macau both for travellers and for British interests in the Far East.
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