When the Portuguese arrived in 1514, they were the first seafaring Europeans to make a Chinese landfall in the modern era. The first landing was on Lintin Island in the bay of the West River on which Canton is located. By the 1540s they had established a base at Macao, and in 1557 the Chinese formally granted permission to the Portuguese to establish a trading station there. That Portuguese base would play a very large role in the development of Western commerce with China, even though other Europeans involved in the China trade would soon outnumber the Portuguese. Macao became the off-season home for the Western traders in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, as the Chinese Empire increasingly allowed trade only at Canton and only during a specific period each year.

Portuguese Macao was not only a base for the European trade with China, it also became a base for Christian missionary activity. One of the basic motivations for Portuguese expansion into Asia had always been the spreading of the Christian religion. Soon after the establishment of Macao, representatives of the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits) arrived in Macao hoping to penetrate the Chinese Empire. The first attempts had failed and there was not much success until Alesandro Valignano moved to Macao in October 1577. As a Jesuit Visitor, Valignano called for Jesuits to use missionary methods that were "utterly different from those" had used earlier. Thereafter the Jesuits adopted a policy of "accommodation" by which they became proficient in the Chinese language and culture. Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, would actually be able to establish a residence in Peking with this policy. But Catholic rivalry between the Portuguese and the Spanish from Manila, internal rebellion in China, and the resultant change of dynasty in the Chinese capital eventually allowed the new Manchu Dynasty to confine both the Western missionaries and the traders to the Canton area based in Macao.

By the beginning of the Ch’ing Dynasty in 1644, Portuguese traders were not alone on the China coast. In 1600 the British Empire had formed the British East India Company and soon thereafter other nations followed with their own trading companies. The increased trading activities had caused the Chinese to establish the Canton Trading System which limited the foreign traders to Macao in the off season and allowed a regulated commercial activity in Canton on a restricted schedule. By the early 19^th century the British had outdistanced all other Westerners in terms of the number of traders in the Canton system, but they were still all required to return to the Portuguese base of Macao during the off season. This system had soon became too restrictive for the increasingly restive Western merchants. They had found a valuable new product to sell to the Chinese: opium.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FOREIGN CONCESSIONS

The Portuguese opened the European sea trade with Asia, but they had not remained the dominant Western power in that trade long. Soon the Spanish moved into the Philippines and the Dutch established trading posts in India and Southeast Asia. It was the British Empire, however, that would forever change the Western relationship to China. As the British East India Company had established itself in India, its spread came to include the trade at Canton. By the opening of the 19^th century the British dominated the trade. By the 1830s China’s attempt to end the plague of opium would bring the country into direct conflict with the British Empire. The Opium War (1839-1842) between Britain and the Chinese Empire left no doubt about the superiority of Western arms, and the Chinese were forced to admit defeat and negotiate a peace treaty. That came in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking between England and China, and was followed by treaties with other European powers. The treaty settlement, which became known as the Unequal Treaty System, had forced China to open five ports to Western residence and commerce and to grant extraterritoriality to the foreigners, which allowed them to live in China under their own country’s laws. The Portuguese residents in China became full participants in the extraterritoriality system by an agreement signed between Portugal and the Chinese in 1887. These and additional rights granted to foreigners would grow over the period of the Unequal Treaty System. Those ports, designated as "treaty ports," would also grow in number after the first clash between China and the West. Foreign trade in Shanghai under the Unequal Treaty System officially commenced on November 17, 1843, although there was as yet no land assigned to the foreigners. Treaty port status meant that the foreigners, primarily the British, the French and the Americans, and then later the Japanese, could establish concessions within the ports. The English had formed the first concession in the city, the French and the Americans followed soon afterwards. And within a very short time the American and British Concessions were combined into what came to be known as the International Settlement. The concessions in Shanghai were unique in that they became areas over which foreigners exercised almost full sovereign rights. By the 1850s the International Settlement developed a governing municipal council and during a period of rebellion, the British and other foreigners set up a customs service. The French insisted on going their own way and established a separate French Concession, it was also governed by a municipal council over which the French Consul-General exercised almost total control.

HISTORICAL SHANGHAI

Shanghai’s geographical location, is on the Whangpoo (Huangpu) River, it is a tributary of the Yangtze River, played a significant role in the city becoming one of China’s principal ports. The Yangtze delta area around Shanghai had came under cultivation during the T’ang Dynasty (618-907) and by the time of the late Sung Dynasty (907-1279) the city had developed into an important trading center. A town or chen (zhen), administrative township, was founded in 1267. Shanghai county was established in 1292. Shanghai’s location helped it becoming the center of a reciprocal trade between the area of rice production and the cash-crop area of cotton production to the east of the city, making the port "the heartland of China’s premodern cotton industry." Well before the coming of the foreigners to Shanghai, the city was a busy commercial port that was rapidly evolving both inside and outside its city walls.

One historian described Ch’ing (Qing) Dynasty (1644-1911) Shanghai as "A City Built by Guilds." Over two dozen native place associations, common trade associations, and mixed guilds were active in the city in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. These merchant organizations helped expanding the city outside the wall that encircled the original Chinese city by constructing guild halls, rental housing, and temples, as well as buildings of manufacture and commerce. Besides commercial activities, the guilds became involved in providing civic services through their benevolent projects. As a historian of the city has observed, "They thus contributed to an evolving sense of a common civic identity quite distinct from paternalistic government supervision." Thus Shanghai, as a commercial city, was unique in the Chinese Empire. Major cities of the empire tended to be administrative, political cities; Shanghai was a commercial city, which engaged in both domestic and international commerce.

Shanghai of the Treaty Port era consisted of the old Chinese subprefectural city, the International Settlement, the French Concession and the Chinese suburbs of Nantao, Chapei and Pootung; the last named territory was located across the Whangpoo River from the city proper. The Chinese administrative areas remained distinct from the International Settlement and the French Concession, which were administered by foreigners.

ABOUT THIS STUDY

The following study is an examination of the life and influence of the Portuguese natives who were residents of the city of Shanghai during the period when the International Settlement and the French Concession stood as protectors of the treaty rights for foreigners which the Unequal Treaty System forced on China. Researched in sources only available in Shanghai, the eight chapters of the work examine the size of the Portuguese population, the officials of the Portuguese Consulate-General of the city, the history of the Portuguese Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, the cultural and public institutions of the Portuguese community, the social problems faced by the Portuguese population and the business concerns owned or operated by the Portuguese of Shanghai. Chapter 8, "The Portuguese Who’s Who in Shanghai," is a comprehensive list of the Portuguese residents of the city for the time period covered. The list is considered to be as complete as the scattered sources of the time will allow. Several appendices are added. They include a list of street names for Shanghai, which are given in both the old names (those used during the era of the International Settlement and the French Concession) and the new names which are in use in Shanghai today under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China. Additional appendices are a list of the priests who served at the major Portuguese church in the city and a list of the religious holidays observed by the Portuguese Catholics. The last appendix is a list of places of interest in the city.