History of Macau
[5][7] Since the 5th century, merchant ships travelling between Southeast Asia and Guangzhou used the region as a port for refuge, fresh water, and food.
[5][7][9] Mong Há has long been the centre of Chinese life in Macau and the site of what may be the region's oldest temple, a shrine devoted to the Buddhist Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy).
[10] Later in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD), fishermen migrated to Macau from various parts of Guangdong and Fujian provinces and built the A-Ma Temple where they prayed for safety on the sea.
The sailors later established posts at Goa in 1510, and conquered Malacca in 1511, driving the Sultan to the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula from where he kept making raids on the Portuguese.
In the same year, the Indian Viceroy Afonso de Albuquerque commissioned Rafael Perestrello — a cousin of Christopher Columbus – to sail to China in order to open up trade relations.
In 1521 and 1522 several more Portuguese ships reached the trading island Tamão off the coast near Guangzhou, but were driven away by the now-hostile Ming authorities.
[15] The Chinese poet Wu Li wrote a poem, which included a line about the Portuguese in Macau being supplied with fish by the Tanka.
The Guangzhou–Macau–Nagasaki route was particularly profitable because the Portuguese acted as middlemen, shipping Chinese silks to Japan and Japanese silver to China, pocketing huge markups in the process.
[25] As well as being an important trading post, Macau was a centre of activity for Catholic missionaries, as it was seen as a gateway for the conversion of the vast populations of China and Japan.
An exception was made for the Protestant Dutch, who were allowed to continue to trade with Japan from the confines of a small man-made island in Nagasaki, Deshima.
The news that the Portuguese House of Braganza had regained control of the Crown from the Spanish Habsburgs took two years to reach Macau, arriving in 1642.
Over the next century, Britain, the Dutch Republic, France, Denmark, Sweden, the United States and Russia moved in, establishing factories and offices in Guangzhou and Macau.
British trading dominance in the 1790s was unsuccessfully challenged by a combined French and Spanish naval squadron at the Macau Incident of 27 January 1799.
The Templo de Kun Iam was the site where, on 3 July 1844, the treaty of Wangxia (named after the village of Mong Ha where the temple was located) was signed by representatives of the United States and China.
After China ceded Hong Kong to the British in 1842, Macau's position as a major regional trading centre declined further still because larger ships were drawn to the deep-water port of Victoria Harbour.
[30]: 81–82 Portugal gained control of the island of Wanzai (Lapa by the Portuguese and now as Wanzaizhen), to the northwest of Macau and which now is under the jurisdiction of Zhuhai (Xiangzhou District), in 1849 but relinquished it in 1887.
[31] In the 1930s, Macau's traditional income streams related to illegal opium sales dried up, as the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet suppressed piracy and smuggling in support of Hong Kong's growing commercial status.
Traditional local industries of fishing, firecrackers and incense, as well as tea and tobacco processing, were all small scale, while Macau government income from 'Fan-Tan' gambling was only around US$5000 (about US$100,000 in modern money) per day.
One channel that bore fruit was as a transit point for the new trans-Pacific passenger and postal flights, for competing airlines from the US and Japan – which was at the time engaged in conflict with China.
In 1935, Pan-Am secured sea-landing rights in Macau and immediately set about building related communications infrastructure in the enclave, allowing a service from San Francisco to begin in November that year.
[32] Intertwined with this economic progress was an alleged and much discussed offer (never officially confirmed) in 1935 by Japan to buy Macau from Portugal, for US$100 million.
[33] As such, Macau enjoyed a brief period of economic prosperity, being the only neutral port in South China, after the Japanese had occupied Guangzhou (Canton) and Hong Kong.
On June 26, 1942, a Hawker Osprey III (6) of Aeronáutica Naval crashed into a residential area in Macau, killing both occupants as well as one person on the ground.
[30]: 84 On December 3, 1966, two days of rioting occurred in which hundreds were injured and six[30]: 84 to eight people were killed, leading also to a total climbdown by the Portuguese government.
[42] The event set in motion de facto abdication of Portuguese control over Macau, putting it on the path to eventual decolonization.
[30]: 85 In 1979, Portugal and China established formal diplomatic relations and reached a secret agreement to characterize Macau as a Chinese territory under Portuguese administration.
[30]: 11 The casino wars were largely attributable to rival Triad groups who sought to gain control of Macau's illicit industries before Portugal transferred the territory back to China.
[30]: 11 Portugal and the People's Republic of China established diplomatic relations on 8 February 1979, and Beijing acknowledged Macau as "Chinese territory under Portuguese administration."
[53][54] This led the Macau government to attempt to reconstruct the economy, to depend less on gambling revenues and focus on building world-class non-gambling tourism and leisure centres, as well as developing itself as a platform for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.
[59] Overall, Macau was among the safest places in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, with relatively few infections and a large array of medical, social, and financial response measures.
