Portuguese traders, Catholic missionaries, who were Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits, such as Saint Francis Xavier[31] and administrators poured into the vast region.

These men often married local residents with the official encouragement of D. Alfonso de Albuquerque by the royals granted approval in the form called Politicos dos casamentos.

These men came from the maritime peoples of the region and included Swahili from Eastern Africa, Arabs, Indians from the coastal communities of Gujarat, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Bengal in India, Malays, and Chinese.

This genetic and cultural mixing especially between Portugal, Cochin, Goa, Ayutthaya, Malacca, Macau and Nagasaki in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century marks the first dispersal.

The rise of British rule in Asia, corresponded with population increase in Goa and Macau and a general feeling that the Portuguese had all but forgotten their Asian colonies.

Three events in particular provided the movement of Luso-Asians to areas under British influence; the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 opened-up Hong Kong and Shanghai to the Macanese,.

However, in the late 1960s Africanisation in East Africa brought about Luso-Asian migration from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to the United Kingdom and after 1971 to Australia and Canada.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century the departure of the Portuguese from Macau and the British from Hong Kong led to the migration of Luso-Asians (mainly Macanese) to Australia, Canada and the USA.

There is also a distinct Konkani-speaking Catholic community who call themselves East Indians and reside in Mumbai and who were under Portuguese rule prior to Bombay being handed to the British in 1661.

The Luso-Goan ethnicity is considered as being of Portuguese patrilineal descent mixed with Persian, Goud Saraswat Brahmin, Kunbi, Kharvi and other Konkani origins.

[39] During the period of absolute monarchy in Portugal, the Portuguese nobility residing in Goa enjoyed the most privileged status and held the most important government offices, and high positions in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The influence of the nobles decreased substantially with the introduction of the constitutional monarchy in 1834, although the erosion of their power had begun with the accession of the Marquis de Pombal as the Prime Minister of Portugal in the mid-eighteenth century.

Additionally, Portuguese names, Catholicism and aspects of Luso-Asian Architecture are found among the fishing communities of the Northwest coast of Sri Lanka.

Centuries of inter-marriage have left the Bayingyi more or less assimilated into the Bamar ethnic group of Myanmar, but they have still kept their sense of Portuguese identity and Roman Catholic religion.

The community was primarily composed of Eurasians of Asian-Portuguese origin and ethnic Goans, as well as few Burgher people from Sri Lanka, and some European Portuguese.

There has been an increase in the teaching of Portuguese owing to the growing trade links between China and Lusophone nations such as Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and East Timor, with 5,000 students learning the language.

[58] The early settlement was on Hong Kong island near to the docks, banks, civil service institutions, publishing houses and other workplaces where the men were employed in mid-level positions.

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Shanghai contained a flourishing community of Luso-Asians composed of Macanese, Luso-Chinese, Goans and Eurasians from the Straits Settlements, Indonesia (including Timor and mixed Portuguese-Cantonese people), Thailand, and Japan.

Following the expulsion of the Portuguese, Japanese Christians fled to Macau, Manila, Hoi An (Vietnam) and Ayutthaya, others remained in Japan as secret or Crypto-Christians.

Luso-Asians as soldiers, wives, servants, slaves and concubines and clergy were present at Portuguese bases such as Malindi, Mombasa and Mozambique Island in the seventeenth century.

With the arrival of independence after 1960, the numbers of Goans in all East African countries plummeted due to a process of Africanisation, coupled with the absorption of Goa into the Indian Union in 1961.

Goan immigration continued in the interwar period when it also came from South Goa and spread along the railway route to Nairobi and Port Florence or Kisumu.

Goans in Kenya dominated the Civil Service especially the Railways and Customs departments, they were also employed in the banking, industrial and agricultural sectors as administrators and clerks.

[68] As part of the Portuguese Empire, Luso-Asians were encouraged to settle in Angola before the 1960s, some who held posts in government in Mozambique and Portugal, particularly after the inclusion of Goa into the India in 1961 were designated jobs there by the Salazar regime until the overthrow of the dictatorship.

The Indian annexation of Goa, Damman, and Diu and the independence of Mozambique and Angola resulted in an increased number of people of Luso-Asian origin in Portugal.

With the exception of a few families in Amazonas, Pernambuco and Minas Gerais, the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro account for the majority of settlement of Luso-Asians.

Later as the settlement of coastal Brazil developed, many governors, Catholic clerics, and soldiers who had formally served in Asia arrived with their Asian wives, concubines, servants and slaves.

Research in British Columbia suggests that Luso-Asian and Hispano-Asian (i.e. Filipino) Lascars arrived on the Pacific coast of Canada in the late eighteenth century.

[75] During the First World War Goan crewmen served as volunteers on the ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway that were seconded by the British Admiralty as Armed Merchant Vessels and performed troop transport duties in the Indian Ocean.

[80] Today there are Luso-Asian communities in many Australian cities, including people of Goan, Sri Lankan, Macanese, Timorese and Kristang origin.