The Opium War was a serious blow to China's power and reputation. The Portuguese government and the Portuguese authorities in Macao thought that expanding actions might gain them much with little risk, so they decided to follow the example of the other Western powers to turn Macao and its surrounding area into a colony.

In 1843, when the Opium War was nearly at an end, the British Governor to Hong Kong and others mentioned that Macao was within the Chinese Emperor's jurisdiction. The Portuguese government raised a protest. But the British replied clearly: there could not be two independent sovereignties in the same place at the same time. Moreover, when the British in Macao needed protection most, the Portuguese had admitted that they were powerless to provide it. After encountering this rebuff, the Portuguese authorities in Macao sent representatives to negotiate with the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Qiying, several times in Macao and Canton in the summer of 1843. During the negotiations, the Portuguese claimed that because the Chinese government had ceded Hong Kong to Britain unconditionally and opened five trading ports, they had suffered a great injustice and injury. They demanded exemption from the 500 taels of silver per year of land rent, asked the Chinese government to let the Portuguese troops garrison the whole Macao Peninsula, and made a series of requests in trade.

Qiying was a timid appeaser to the foreigners, but he refused flatly the demand of these "Italians" to occupy the whole Macao Peninsula. Arguing that Hong Kong and Macao could not be put on a par because the former was an island where the government did not levy taxes, while the latter was a place where taxes were collected, he ordered the Portuguese to pay land rent as before. He also pointed out that the reason accounting for the Barrier's being built at the Lianhuajing was that it was a strategic point; by no means was it a border delimitation. Moreover, as in the south of the Barrier Gate, there were both Chinese villages and the office of the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County, it was impossible to let the Portuguese troops guard the Barrier Gate. The two sides had merely agreed that the Portuguese settlement was delimited by the Gate of St. Antonio to the north and that any extension beyond that limit was forbidden. As to the Portuguese houses and a fortress that had stood for a long time outside the city wall, they could be kept by the Portuguese as before.

Qiying agreed with most of the Portuguese requests about trade, but refused to make Macao a trading port like Canton. He made a regulation with the Portuguese about the trade in Macao, which stipulated that the Portuguese merchants and their ships could trade in five trading ports in China; the fee for the stipulated twenty-five Macaonese merchant ships would be 30% less than for other foreign merchant ships, namely, a reduction from 0.5 taels of silver per ton to 0.35 taels of silver per ton; it was no longer necessary to obtain a licence and to pay fees for the repairing of houses and ships within Macao; there would be no limitation on the amount of goods shipped from Canton to Macao by Chinese merchants. The articles allowing the Portuguese to repair houses and ships without applying for a licence and so on were at first firmly opposed by Junji Dachen (the Grand Ministers of State) and the Ministry of Financial in Beijing. Only at the insistence from Qiying did the Qing government approved the regulation in full.

These facts show that the Qing government was still granting Macao a special status, letting the Portuguese continue to enjoy preferential treatment. At the same time, the Qing government knew that maintaining its control over the Portuguese in Macao had become much more difficult than in the past, and that it was impossible to make the Portuguese submit to its administration in everything as they had before the Opium War. Having looser control over the Portuguese and exempting them from applying for licence in repairing houses and ships would be better than failing to force the Portuguese to observe the former regulations. However, the original boundary of the Portuguese settlement had to be strictly maintained, and the Portuguese ambitions of expanding the settlement should be strictly restrained; then, the Chinese and Portuguese could live in peace with each other in the days to come.

In addition, although internally the Qing officials still disdained the Portuguese and called the Portuguese officials "foreign chiefs", on the surface, the Qing officials had to treat the Portuguese officials the same as they treated the British officials, showing some respect for them. They called the main Portuguese officials in Macao "Your Excellency", and changed the name of the documents sent to the Portuguese in Macao from "written instructions" to "notes".

The preferential treatment shown to the Portuguese by the Qing government was far from satisfying some Portuguese colonialists. They saw the aftermath of the Opium War as a rare chance and stepped up their aggressive expansion. On September 25, 1843, the Portuguese guards in Macao went beyond the boundary of the settlement, clashed with the poor Chinese inhabitants and opened fire, leaving three Chinese killed and a number wounded. Several days later, the Portuguese guards killed another Chinese who had perhaps attempted to pilfer. In the same year, the Portuguese authorities counted the households, set up boundary symbols and forced the Chinese peasants to pay them land tax in the area north of the Portuguese settlement, attempting to occupy the northern part of the Macao Peninsula. The local gentleman, Zhao Xun, and the gentry from twenty-four villages nearby, asked the top officials in Guangdong to ban such actions. In 1844, the Portuguese authorities in Macao presumptuously built a fortress on Taipa Island without permission, proclaiming that their jurisdiction had been expanded to Taipa. At the same time, the Portuguese government separated Macao from Goa's jurisdiction and put Macao, Timor and Solor together to form a so-called "province" with the provincial capital located in Macao. The Governor of Macao would be assisted by an administrative committee consisting of directors of four departments, the chairman of the Senate and the procurator. But as Solor was still in the hands of the Dutch, the Macao Governor ruled Macao and Timor only. Seeing that Britain had proclaimed Hong Kong a free port, attracting numerous foreign merchants, the Portuguese Queen, Maria II, proclaimed Macao a free port on November 20, 1845. Without Chinese authorization, she allowed foreign merchant ships from any country to trade in Macao free of duties.

As these Portuguese actions were carried out secretly behind the back of Chinese government just as in the past, no serious conflicts with the Chinese authorities emerged. Because the Chinese customs office in Macao still collected goods tariffs and ship fees from the foreign merchant ships, the so-called Macao free port was so in name only. And the cancellation of the Portuguese customs caused the Portuguese authorities in Macao to lose an important source of revenue. From December of 1845 to April of 1846, the impoverished Portuguese authorities in Macao had no money to pay even the wages of the government functionaries, and let alone allowances to the orphan asylum, churches, monasteries and convents.

In these straits, the Portuguese government supported a fanatical colonialist called Toao Maria Ferreira do Amaral, a captain with one arm, who clamored that the Portuguese would turn Macao into a completely autonomous colony. In April 1846, when Amaral became the Governor of Macao, he put his idea into practice right away. First, he usurped the jurisdiction over the Chinese inhabitants in Macao and illegally levied taxes from them by exploiting the muddleheadedness of the Guangdong officials. He took a census of the Chinese firms and shops and forced the owners to pay house and land taxes. He also forced the Chinese workers and others to pay poll tax and attempted to levy income tax as well. Those who refused to pay were immediately detained and beaten up, driving the Chinese people beyond endurance.

Especially, Amaral's imposition of a tax of one silver dollar per ship per month on the Chinese passage boats in the Inner Harbour provoked the Chinese boat people to armed resistance. On the early morning of October 8, 1846, some Chinese junks were detained by the Portuguese authorities in Macao, because they refused to pay the tax. Chinese boat people from forty junks landed with three guns and went to attack the Citadel via a lane in front of the church of St. Antony. They exchanged fire with a squad of Sepoys they encountered on the way. Another squad of sepoys rushed to reinforce their companions with two field-pieces, so did some armed Portuguese citizens. After the Chinese retreated to their junks, these Portuguese armed forces continued to fire, and were joined by the Citadel and Portuguese armed lorchas. Twenty Chinese junks caught on fire and sank, and a large number of Chinese boat people were killed.

Amaral was proud and happy with this bloody atrocity, claiming that it showed the Portuguese inhabitants' support for the authorities. With grief and indignation, the Chinese merchants held a strike, protesting by cutting off food supplies to the Portuguese. Amaral threatened that if the shops did not resume business within twenty-four hours, he would order the Citadel to raze the whole bazaar with gun-fire. This terrible threat forced the merchants to call off the strike.

When the officials of Xiangshan County went to Macao to investigate the incident, Amaral did not receive them with traditional protocol, and did not even allow them to be proceeded by the usual gongs. When the negotiations started, the Chinese officials said that if the top officials of Guangdong Province were asked to handle the problem concerning passage boats, it would certainly have a proper result. But Amaral claimed that on him had developed the full jurisdiction over all Chinese inhabitants in Macao, and in adopting various measures, he would no longer think of consulting Chinese authorities. Strangely, the Chinese officials left Macao with satisfactory mood after they were "hospitably treated", probably, having been served a luxurious meal and received valuable gifts. This serious incident was left unsettled.

Then, Amaral decided to dismantle the branch of the Chinese Customs Office in Macao near Praya Grande. In 1847, with the excuse that the officer had extorted contributions from the boat people, Amaral arrested the Chinese customs officer, ordered him to leave Macao within twenty-four hours and publicly disposed of the customs house. The Viceroy of the Two Guangs, Qiying, was taken aback and asked Amaral why he had expelled this Chinese watch-keeper. Amaral accused him of robbery and other crimes. When Qiying prepared to send another watch-keeper to Macao, Amaral claimed that because the Queen of Portugal had announced that Macao was a free port, Macao needed no Chinese officials to check smuggling. The cowardly and weak-willed Qiying took a laissez-faire attitude towards what the Portuguese said and did in open violation of China's sovereignty. Amaral easily achieved the initial steps of his aggressive plan. The Senate of Macao, composed of the Portuguese who were born in Macao or lived in Macao for a long time and did not want to have serious clashes with the Chinese government and people, was opposed to Amaral's drastic colonialist policy. In a series of dispatches the Senate sent to the Portugal's Minister for Colonial Affairs, they strongly deprecated Amaral's fanatic anti-China policy and criticized his outrages. By 1847, this internal struggle had gradually come to light. Because the finances of the Portuguese authorities in Macao were becoming even tighter, their daily expenditures had to come from merchant donations. In addition, in Portugal proper, a civil war broke out. Busy with its own affairs, the Portuguese government had to rely upon Amaral's so-called "reform" to get this "colony" out from its impasse. With Lisbon's support, Amaral taunted the Senators with lack of loyalty and patriotism, and reorganized the Senate. From then on, he proceeded with his so-called "reform" even more unbridledly.

In 1848, Amaral built a road running north from the Gate of St. Lazarus at the north-east settlement to the Barrier Gate via the back of Long Tin Village without the permission of the chinese authorities. The road went past the foot of the Guia Hill, where there were many tombs of the Chinese inhabitants' ancestors. Amaral ordered the tombs removed, paying 1.4 taels of silver for each. If the owners balked, he razed the tombs and threw the skeletons into the sea. In the meantime, he illegally announced that all the land owners south of the Barrier Gate had to pay land tax to the Portuguese authorities in Macao instead of the Qing government. His purpose was of two-fold: to expand Macao's territory and mitigate the financial crisis.

At the beginning of 1849, Amaral outrageously sealed off the Chinese Customs Office in Macao by taking advantage of the clash between China and Britain on whether the British could enter Canton city or not. On March 5, he even proclaimed in a bulletin:

At the flat refutation of the Chinese customs officials, Amaral sent troops to blockade the gate of the Chinese Customs Office and sent lorchas and soldiers to patrol and guard the harbour, preventing the Chinese officials from collecting duties from the merchant ships and goods.

Afterwards, Amaral wrote to the Viceroy of the Two Guangs, Xu Kuangjin, suggesting a trade treaty between China and Portugal concerning Macao and other Chinese ports, and requesting to have a Portuguese consul at Canton. Xu Guangjin pointed out in his immediate reply that it was not necessary to have a Portuguese consul at Canton, because the Portuguese merchants did not trade in Canton. As to the Chinese Customs Office in Macao, which had existed in Macao for a long time, why had Amaral disturbed the established system? It was known to all that Portugal had bogged down in difficulties year after year. If Admaral should take ignorant and rash action again, both the Chinese and foreign merchants would be irritated and life in Macao would become even more difficult.

Defying the warning of the Chinese authorities, on March 13, Amaral and some dozens of soldiers nailed up the Chinese Customs Office, cut down the posts on which Chinese flags used to fly, and destroyed the stone tablets carved with the "Agreement on the Aftermath Arrangements Concerning the Foreigners in Macao" (Convention) in the Senate House. They attempted to obliterate all the evidence showing the undisputed sovereignty China had always enjoyed over Macao. Moreover, the Portuguese no longer reported lawsuits involving Chinese to the authorities of Xiangshan County. They tried and sentenced the offenders without authorization. For instance, when an African inhabitant killed a Chinese, Amaral simply had the murderer shot; when a Portuguese soldier insulted the wife and daughter of a Chinese officer guarding the Barrier Gate, Amaral beat the offender with 200 strokes before the Chinese officer. Amaral's next several steps would expel the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County in Macao, refuse to pay land rent and announce the whole Macao Peninsula to be Portuguese colony, taking over all the sovereignty of Macao from China.

When Amaral made his arrangements, Xu Guangjin and his assistants were locked in a stalemate with the British on the problem of whether the British might enter Canton city or not. They heard a rumour that Amaral had hurried to Hong Kong to borrow one warship and 400 marines from the British after sealing off the Chinese Customs Office in Macao. This seemed to be clear evidence of collusion between the British chiefs and Amaral and suggested that the British had deliberately egged the Portuguese on to irritate China. If the Chinese forces should attack Macao, the British would take the advantage. In the meantime, the Chinese officials were worried, because the chiefs of the Americans, French, Spanish and other foreigners all lived in Macao. If the Chinese army should march into Macao, it would be difficult to distinguish among them and they would rally together to fight against the Chinese. Moreover, there were only one or two evil-doers in Macao, including Amaral. The rest of the Portuguese were born in Macao and on the whole, knew their place on the whole. Even if the Chinese won a complete victory, Amaral would certainly escape to Hong Kong, and the Chinese were not hardhearted enough to slaughter the indigenous Portuguese. In addition, it would be very difficult for a large number of troops to remain in Macao for a long time. Once the troops withdrew, Amaral would return to Macao again. The overall situation was spoiled by one or two bad elements and it was too difficult to think out a surefire plan.

Finally, after discussing the matter with the Inspector of Guangdong Customs, Xu Guangjin decided to adopt the stratagem of subduing the Portuguese with commercial means, namely, moving the Chinese customs office from Macao to Huangpu and setting up a market there, and ordering all the Chinese firms and shops in Macao to move to Huangpu. By so doing, they thought, there would be no business in Macao, propelling the Portuguese into dire straits without firing a shot.

At that time, the Chinese merchants in Macao continued to hand over goods lists and pay duties to the Chinese customs officials remaining in Macao behind Amaral's back. Upon receiving Xu Guangjin's order, the owners of the Chinese big firms laid down rules themselves, checked with each other, and moved from Macao to Huangpu with their dependents and shop assistants. Amaral was astounded and hurriedly proclaimed to the Chinese inhabitants of Macao Peninsula on April 24, 1848, declaring that:

Amaral's threat failed to prevent the fairly rich Chinese merchants from leaving, and merely made the situation in Macao very tense. A rumour spread that the Portuguese were going to attack the Latashi Fortalice beyond the Barrier Gate, which caused more Chinese inhabitants leave in haste. Macao was like a ghost town: bleak and desolate streets and empty lanes. From then on, as far as commerce was concerned, the new and developing Hong Kong surpassed Macao, which had been established as a trading port for three hundred years, and Macao's status in the trade between China and foreign countries declined further.

During this period, deterred by the powerful and dynamic struggles of the people in Guangdong Province, the British announced their intention of giving up the demand to enter Canton city, having the tense relation between China and Britain relaxed a bit. But the interlude ended suddenly on June 6. On that day, James Summers, a British Protestant and a teacher in the Anglo-Chinese school at Hong Kong, landed at Macao. In passing through the Senate square, he met the procession of Corpus Christ. He stopped to watch with hat on, and did not follow Amaral's order to uncover. Amaral ordered him arrested. Captain Charles William Dumbar Straveley, a British senior officer in Hong Kong, discussed the matter with two other British senior officers, Captain Keppel and Captain Troubridge, after receiving a note from James Summers. On the next day, Keppel, Straveley and Troubridge all went to visit Amaral and demanded Summers' release. Amaral probably wanted to show that Macao was Portuguese territory and the British who enjoyed extraterritoriality in China should come under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese authorities, so he refused to release Summers. The British did not take this lying down. Taking advantage of Amaral's boarding the U.S.S. Plymouth to act as umpire of a regatta, Captain Keppel ordered a strong body of marines to come ashore from a British frigate, with the first boat's crew placed in the charge of Captain Staveley, who had gone reconnoitering in disguise first. The marines went through a by-way to the Senate House, liberated Summers by force, and killed a Portuguese soldier and wounded three others. The whole rescue operation only took five minutes; the sepoys in Macao who witnessed the incident did not fire a single shot.

Amaral hastened back to Macao as furious as a wounded animal. He ordered all the fortresses to be on the alert, but in the end he did not dare to order the Portuguese troops to open fire on the British ships, which were still quite near. After repeated protests from the Portuguese side, the British government agreed to apologize to the Portuguese, rebuke Keppel and compensate the dependents of the dead soldier.

This dramatic struggle between the British and the Portuguese revealed the conflicts between them. The Guangdong authorities could have used this opportunity to strengthen their control over Macao again. It is pity that the Chinese officials like the Viceroy Xu Guangjin thought that Amaral had realized that he had been misled by others into sealing off the Chinese customs office and had come to regret it, and that Portugal and Britain had split and were no longer colluding; Amaral stayed inside all day long, did not dare to show his face, and was in a sorry plight. So they held that there was no need to worry about the Portuguese actions, and it was unnecessary to take new measures to keep a lookout and control over Macao. They even thought that it was no longer necessary to follow the Daoguang Emperor's instruction: "You must choose appropriate officials to inspect and investigate Macao from time to time".

In fact, Amaral had not come around and was still planning to make Macao a full-fledged Portuguese colony. Because Xu Guangjin did not approve the Portuguese request to send a consul to Canton, on the afternoon of August 22, Amaral threatened to immediately prohibit the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County from exercising his power in Macao. But before he could take action, the Chinese masses had sealed his doom. Amaral had levelled off many tombs belonging to the ancestors of the Chinese inhabitants while building the road from the settlement to the Barrier Gate. Tens of thousands of Chinese workers lost their jobs when he sealed off the Chinese Customs Office. There were many Chinese inhabitants in Macao who wanted revenge. Placards and notices appeared in Canton, promising reward to those who killed Amaral.

A youth from Long Tin Village, called Shen Zhiliang, had six of his ancestors' tombs levelled off, a cause for inveterate hatred at that time in China. Together with Guo An, Li Bao, Zhang Xian, Zhou You and Chen Fa, he decided to assassinate the enemy by taking advantage of Amaral's habit of riding to the Barrier Gate every day at nightfall. The young men did not keep the secret well, but let the cat out of the bag, so many Chinese inhabitants knew that someone would take action on the evening tour. Even Amaral's Chinese servant knew and tried to persuade Amaral not to go riding to the Barrier Gate any more. Because Amaral always looked down upon the Chinese, on August 22, he rode to the Barrier Gate as usual with his aid, Senhor Leite. About six o'clock in the evening, when Amaral was returning from the Barrier Gate, Shen Zhiliang and his friends, lying in ambush a hundred meters away, rushed up in front of Amaral, pretending to lodge a complaint against someone. After Amaral stopped, they suddenly drew knives from their umbrellas, dragged Amaral down from his horse and cut off his head and his only arm. Leite was dragged down as well, but Shen and his friends did not kill him, for they thought that he had not committed capital crimes deserving death punishment. Shen and his companions made good their escape through the Barrier Gate and returned to the interior.

The Portuguese in Macao feared that the Chinese army would take advantage of Amaral's assassination to attack Macao. They hurriedly set up a council headed by the Bishop Jeronimo Perira de Matta to govern Macao. On August 23, the Portuguese authorities protested to Xu Guangjin, claiming that the placards and notices which had promised reward to those who killed Amaral were published in Canton some time ago, so if the assassination did not originate with the Chinese authorities themselves, there were at least good grounds for believing that it had their support and sanction.

At dusk of the same day, the council of government delivered a letter to the Chinese garrison at the Barrier Gate and the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County, demanding for a return of the head and arm of the governor within twenty-four hours. Xu Guangjin did not hear of Amaral's assassination until August 24. In order to prevent the Portuguese from using the episode to make trouble, Xu immediately ordered the Magistrate of Xiangshan County and the Commander of Xiangshan Brigade to quickly reinforce the batteries near Macao with the troops of the brigade. He also asked the Provincial Naval Commander, Hong Mingxiang, to coordinate the naval forces to support the infantry. He also secretly instructed the Chinese inhabitants in Macao to occupy the Portuguese settlement, if the Portuguese should invade Chinese interior, but not to act first.

At this critical moment, out of the need to invade China further, the British Governor of Hong Kong, Samuel George Bonham, decided to support the Portuguese, regardless of their recent enmity with the Portuguese. On August 24, 1848, Bonham sent two warships to Macao to demonstrate Britain's sympathy with the Portuguese to the Chinese government. With the American and French envoys, Bonham lodged a protest with the Viceroy of the Two Guangs and denied giving up the demand to enter Canton city. With the support of Britain, France and the United States, the Portuguese authorities in Macao decided to provoke a conflict.

With the excuse that the Guangdong authorities had assembled troops near Macao and were about to attack, on the morning of August 25, the Portuguese authorities launched an attack against the Barrier Gate with one hundred regulars, twenty soldiers of the Volunteer Corps and three guns, under the cover of gun-fire from the lorchas. The reinforcements sent by Xu Guangjin had not yet arrived at the Barrier Gate region. The Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County, Wang Zheng, fled to the interior as soon as he found that the situation had become tense. The garrison at the Barrier Gate retreated without putting up any resistance. Only the Latashi (Lap-kap Shan) fortalice, one kilometer north of the Barrier Gate, fired at the invading enemies. The Portuguese army easily occupied the damaged Barrier Gate, and captured three Chinese soldiers who had stayed behind. Thirty-five Portuguese, led by Vicente Nicolao de Mesquita, an artillery sergeant, captured the Latashi fortalice after fierce fighting, resulting in one Portuguese soldier being heavily wounded and a Chinese officer and more than ten soldiers being killed. The Portuguese cut off the Chinese officer's head and one of his arms, hung them on a pole and brought them back to Macao.

During the fighting, the Portuguese remaining in Macao, old and young, male and female, were all afraid that the Chinese army might defeat their troops and march into Macao, so they all prayed to the God for mercy. The British marines also landed at Praya Grande. At first, they intended to enter the Portuguese fortresses, but the Portuguese refused to admit them, so they were deployed at the Praya Grande instead, to protect the organs of the government in Macao. Nevertheless, as the Portuguese authorities feared that the Chinese army might launch an attack, they soon retreated from Latashi fortalice, built two more batteries near the Barrier Gate and asked for reinforcements from Goa and Lisbon. In addition, they were reinforced by a strong French detachment with stores and several Spanish gun-boats from Manila, as well as two American warships, so the Western military strength in Macao was greatly increased.

Xu Guangjin and other officials were initially unprepared to resist the Portuguese provocations with force. When the Portuguese had obtained the military support from the other Western powers, Xu sat back, and watched the withdrawal of the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County from Macao to Qianshan and the withdrawal of the troops from Mongha Village to Sanshan Temple of Baishi Village. He explained his passivity by saying that he wished to avoid giving offence to the other Western powers. Xu also ordered the officials of counties and battalions near Macao to arrest Shen Zhiliang to calm the Portuguese. On September 12, the officials of Shunde County arrested Shen Zhiliang and found out Amaral's head and arm mixed with lime and buried at a place called Sangtian. Xu Guangjin thought:

After Shen Zhiliang had been killed at Qianshan on September 15, 1848, Xu Guangjin thought that the incident could come to an end. On September 16, he wrote to the Portuguese authorities in Macao. He told them about the deposition the Chinese authorities had made, and informed them that Amaral's head and arm would be handed over to them on September 27. On that day, the Portuguese requested the return of Amaral's head and arm, but refused to send back three Chinese soldiers, who had been taken prisoner during the fighting. They claimed that these soldiers let the assassins escape through the Barrier Gate after Amaral's assassination, so these soldiers were accomplices, or at least had been derelict in their duty. The Portuguese also claimed that the assassination of Amaral had another chief plotter, and demanded that Chinese side continue to investigate. Afterwards, Xu Guangjin exiled Guo An, an assistant of Shen Zhiliang, to remote frontier, but the Portuguese still refused to hand over the three soldiers, and the deadlock lasted more than three months.

By December, Xu Guangjin said that if the Portuguese continued to refuse to release the three Chinese soldiers, he would have no further interest in these soldiers. On December 24, the Portuguese authorities released them at last in exchanging for Amaral's head and arm. Xu thought that with the soldiers back and Amaral's head and arm handed over, everything returned to normal, so the muddleheaded Chinese Viceroy neglected the very important fact that the Portuguese had occupied the Barrier Gate, driven the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County out of Macao and refused to pay any more land rent. In one word, he let the Portuguese colonialists seize China's sovereignty in Macao. What is even more ridiculous is that the Daoguang Emperor, listening to Xu's statement only and knowing nothing of the truth, even praised him:

Just when Xu Guangjin thought that everything was rosy, the Portuguese were attempting to imitate the British and launch an attack against Canton. One of their aims was, of course, to force the Qing government to sign a treaty with them, acknowledging Macao as Portugal's colony. So the Portuguese government appointed a famous commander, Captain Pedro Alexandrino de Cunha, as the Governor of Macao, sent the frigate "Dona Maria II" and two corvettes, and prepared to dispatch an army from Lisbon to Macao. The Portuguese authorities in Goa also sent a group of European soldiers to strengthen the invading army. The Portuguese colonialists in Macao attempted to force their way into the Pearl River and to attack Canton so as to display their lost might again, by relying upon these forces and the local armed lorchas.

To the disappointment of the Portuguese in Macao, the expected infantry from Portugal proper never came. The new Governor, who arrived at Macao on May 28, 1850, died of cholera suddenly on July 6. And worse still, the frigate "Dona Maria II" was unexpectedly blown up on October 29, while it was firing salute guns to celebrate the birthday of the Queen. More than two hundred persons were killed including the captain, crew members and several dozen Chinese, who happened to be on board. The explosion shocked all of Macao, and with the destruction of the main warship that the Portuguese were going to use in attacking Canton, the plan was scuttled too. Xu Guangjin and his assistants, however, continued to turn a blind eye, and reported to the Xianfeng Emperor in 1850 that the Portuguese in Macao were exhorted, and they were behaving themselves at the moment. These fatuous officials continued to let the Portuguese increase their aggression in the Macao region.

The Portuguese had seized the sovereignty of Macao, but the Qing government had recognized neither their aggressive actions, nor their expansion in the northern part of the Macao Peninsula and on the Taipa Island. Some Chinese officials, such as Ma Zengyi, who assumed the Acting Vice Prefect of Coastal Defence in 1858, still made inspection tours of the villages of Mongha and others in the northern part of Macao Peninsula. In order to legalize their gains, the Portuguese urgently wanted to sign a treaty with the Qing government. In 1858, when the Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Tianjin under the bayonets of the British and French allied forces, a Portuguese envoy came to Shanghai and asked to sign a treaty with China. His request was like looting a burning house, but was rejected by the Qing government. The next year, when the British diplomat, Frederick William Adolphus Bruce, and the French Minister to China, Alphonse de Bourboulon, came to China via Macao to exchange the treaty documents, Governor Izidoro Francisco Guimaraes asked them to help Portugal to negotiate with China. Because the Portuguese in Macao had provided the British-French allied forces with many conveniences, Bourboulon immediately promised to try his best to help the Portuguese.

In 1862, Guimãraes went directly to Beijing as Portugal's plenipotentiary to China without notifying the Chinese officials in Tianjin. At first, the Qing government refused to let him enter the capital, but Bourboulon backed him up, threatening to break diplomatic relations with China and forced the Qing government to negotiate with the Portuguese Plenipotentiary. The representatives of the Qing government were Zongshu Dachen (the Grand Minister of the Foreign Office), Hengqi, Sankou Tongshang Dachen (the Minister of Commerce in Charge of Three Trading Ports), Chonghou, and other officials.

In the long negotiations, Hengqi and others expressed China's wish to restore its sovereignty in Macao, by stationing officials, collecting land rents and so on. But Guimaraes groundlessly claimed that Macao had originally been an autonomous Portuguese colony, and that the Chinese government set up a customs office in Macao later on without benefit of any treaty, convention or expressed consent of the Portuguese government. In view of the fact that the relationship between China and the West had changed comprehensively, it was difficult for Macao to maintain its past political and economic system. Guimaraes continued to exploit the muddleheadedness of the Chinese officials. When concluding the Treaty of Tianjin between China and Portugal, he mentioned that Macao was "formerly in the Province of Canton", as if Macao were no longer a territory of China. Meanwhile, he not only detained for Portugal all the privileges gained by the other Western powers, and deprived China of its right to collect land rent in Macao, but also put such a clause into the treaty under the name of agreeing China to send an official to Macao:

It is clear that such a Chinese official was no longer a local Chinese official like the former Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County, but only a consul of a foreign country. Meanwhile, the Portuguese, French and Chinese versions of the treaty have quite a few important differences in principle. For instance, in one place the Chinese version says:

In the Portuguese and French versions, there is no mention of co-operation to "defend this place". There is no warding whatsoever implying that Macao belongs to China. The treaty also stipulated that:

Naturally, it was countries like Britain and France that would be invited to arbitrate, and the result of such an arbitration can be imagined.

The treaty was a trap designed for the muddleheaded and ignorant Chinese officials. Although Macao was not formally conceded to Portugal in writing, it was nearly so in reality. That is why when Guimaraes returned to Macao, he was accorded an extremely warm welcome second only to that of a war hero and was granted the title of Viscount de Praya Grande by the Queen of Portugal. Soon afterwards, in 1863, the Portuguese authorities dismantled the city wall in the north-east and occupied the village of Tap Siac and Patane beyond the wall. In these villages, they first put up house number plates and set up street lights, and then collected lamp fees and land taxes, stepping up their activities in nibbling away at the northern part of Macao Peninsula north of the city wall and the south of the Barrier Gate.

At the same time, the new Governor of Macao, Jose Rodrigues Coelho do Amaral, went to Beijing to exchange the treaty documents in May, 1864. The Taiping Uprising, which had held on for many years, was nearly defeated, and the rule of the Qing government had been strengthened to some degree. The newly appointed Grand Ministers Xue Huan of the Foreign Office and others found problems in the treaty while reviewing it, so they insisted on a revision of the eighth and ninth clauses. They said that China ought to continue to appoint officials to administer Macao instead of a consul, and demanded that the Portuguese withdraw from the area between the city wall and the Barrier Gate. Amaral refused to revise the treaty, claiming that Macao's border had been delimitated at the Barrier Gate since 1574. He even struck the table and shouted at the Chinese officials regardless of diplomatic protocol. Finally, when he saw that deceit and threats failed to produce any results, he returned to Macao disappointed. Then, he presented notes to the Qing government several times, asking to exchange the treaty documents first and revise the clauses later. The officials of the Foreign Office were going to accept this suggestion, but continued to point out that the Chinese official in Macao if appointed was by no means a consul. As a result, the treaty was not approved by the Chinese government. This decision of the court was widely supported by officials and the commonalty.

Having failed to seize the whole of Macao Peninsula by legal means, the Portuguese colonialists continued to take aggressive actions, hoping to present the Chinese government with a fait accompli. They occupied more of the Taipa Island, building barracks, a church, a police station and other structure, and occupied the West part of Coloane Island and other places in 1865. Afterwards, the Portuguese even set up a municipal council to administer Taipa and Coloane. In 1868, they declared that Macao had three miles of territorial waters and attempted to prevent the Guangdong authorities from establishing tax collecting posts near Macao. Two years later, when a Chinese fleet blockaded Macao, the Portuguese tried in vain to hinder the Guangdong authorities from setting up a tax collecting post at Xiaomaliuzhou (Malau-Chou) Island. But by exploiting the ignorance of the Guangdong officials, they managed to set up buoys at the middle line in the Inner Harbour as a boundary. When the Chinese civil and official boats passed the so-called "territorial waters of Macao", they had to apply for passes from the Portuguese authorities, and the Chinese customs' anti-smuggling patrol boats were often detained by the Portuguese authorities for their "trespassing" on the "territorial waters of Macao".

Starting in the 1860s, the Portuguese authorities over and over again stood in the way of the Chinese runners' pursuing Chinese criminals into Macao. They repeatedly warned the Magistrate of Xiangshan County that they would arrest and punish any Chinese runners who dared to go to Macao to fulfil their duty. In 1874, the Portuguese authorities levelled the old Barrier Gate and the wall, which had been damaged in their aggressive actions fifteen years before, and built a new Barrier Gate in the style of a triumphal arch north of the original one. By 1879, the Portuguese authorities had bought the houses in the Long Wan Village at low prices, and opened up roads to the left and behind the village. Soon the old village was eliminated. Four years later, the Portuguese authorities put Long Tin Village under their administration by registering its hundred-odd households and numbering the houses. Then, they began intruding into the largest Chinese village on Macao Peninsula, Mongha Village, which had over 500 households and more than twenty lanes. The Portuguese authorities established a police station there and numbered the houses. Afterwards, they even stretched their arms to Wanzai and Yinkeng, at the opposite side of the Inner Harbour, forcing the local Chinese inhabitants to pay them a land tax.

The people of the various villages resisted the Portuguese aggression. Many people in Long Wan, Long Tin and other villages refused to pay lamp fees and land taxes to the Portuguese and destroyed the house number plates. The people of Mongha Village felt that it would be shameful to be enrolled into a foreign household list and to pay taxes to the foreigners, so they continued to pay taxes to the Chinese officials of Xiangshan County. They established of their own accord the "Mongha Township Militia" armed with guns. When the Portuguese came to force them to pay taxes, they would sound the gongs to assemble people, and the Portuguese were scared away. Although the Chinese people in northern part of Macao Peninsula and on the islands of Taipa, Coloane and others refused to comply with the Portuguese rule, and the Qing government still could exercise some sovereignty over these places. The Portuguese had preliminarily realized their aim of occupying seven Chinese villages and seizing three offshore islands. The Portuguese collected more than 36,000 silver dollars of taxes a year from these places.

The Viceroys of the Two Guangs, the Governors of Guangdong and the local officials in Xiangshan County who followed Xu Guangjin took no decisive action to prevent Portuguese expansion, because of the long-time disturbances in the region of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. When the Portuguese authorities first refused to pay land rent, the Magistrate of Xiangshan County sent runners to urge them to pay; and he himself managed to make up the Portuguese arrears with money from other sources. Later on, following written instructions from the top Guangdong officials, the Magistrate of Xiangshan County formally offset the Portuguese land rent according to the methods stipulated in regulations concerning Chinese people's arrears, but on the books, it still stood as payment by the Portuguese. After 1869, the Guangdong top officials paid even less attention to the Portuguese arrears and no longer sent any document to urge the Portuguese to pay; instead, the Administration Commissioner of Guangdong solved the problem by simply deducting fifteen taels of silver a year from the allowance for officials to cultivate honest of the Magistrate of Xiangshan County. Aside from one or two cases concerning homicide or debt disputes among the Chinese in Macao, which the Portuguese would still deliver to the officials of Xiangshan County, the Xiangshan County authorities let the Portuguese authorities conduct trials without authorization. All but one or two of the Chinese officials stationed at Qianshan Stronghold, including the Vice Prefect of Coastal Defence, did not worry about carrying on negotiations with foreigners; the civil officials were satisfied to be men of leisure and the military officers confined themselves to the stronghold. And the top Guangdong officials reduced the garrison at the Qianshan Stronghold over and over again. In 1869, the troops were cut by 30%, and in 1877, 80 soldiers were transferred from Qianshan to Canton. Only 177 soldiers remained at Qianshan. The two naval ships belonging to the Qianshan forces were damaged in a storm and dismantled soon afterwards. The armed forces stationed at the Qianshan Stronghold, with drills abandoned and combat formations existing in name only, could hardly cope with the disturbances of vigorously growing bandits, and it was even less possible for them to resist the invasion of the Portuguese.

But many Chinese people were still concerned about the Macao problem. Some sensible Chinese officials, defying Portuguese brutality, announced repeatedly to them that Macao was a Chinese territory, which was only rented to the Portuguese. These officials were also very careful to avoid doing anything that might be interpreted as recognizing Portugal's sovereignty over Macao. For instance, when the officials and gentry of Xiangshan County revised The Chronicles of Xiangshan County in the 1860s, one participant pointed out:

The general editor Chen Feng agreed with this suggestion completely and changed the structure of the chronicles. He put the geography of Macao into the category of mountains and rivers, the events in Macao into the general chronicles, and the customs and the trivial matters of the Portuguese, who rented Macao, into appendices, so as to show that Macao was a territory of China. In 1881, when the Qing government prepared to appoint a consul in Hong Kong, the Portuguese asked the Qing government to appoint one in Macao as well. Viceroy Zhang Shusheng did not approve the request, but was going to let the Chinese consul in Hong Kong take care of matters in Macao as well. Zeng Jize, the Chinese envoy to Britain, France and Russia, pointed out: The Portuguese have taken forcible possession of Macao and now their leasing of it exists in name only. If we should let the consul in Hong Kong to take care of the matters in Macao concurrently, the Portuguese might quote it as evidence showing that China has a consul in Macao. He was of the opinion that China could do what had been done in the international settlement in Shanghai, namely, China could appoint a senior official and send him to Macao to deal with matters happening there together with the local officials, including the Vice Magistrate of Xiangshan County, so that the situation may be remedied.

In the meantime, in Beijing some Chinese officials also worried about the future of Macao, because Portugal was getting poorer and weaker, and Western countries like France, Russia, Germany and the United States cast a greedy eye on Macao, attempting to buy it and turn it into a military base for their naval ships and armed forces in the Far East. If such should be the case, it would pose an even more serious threat to the interior of China. In 1868 under the pressure from the British, who did not want another Western military base near Hong Kong, the Qing government entrusted Don Sinibaldo de Mas, the Spanish Minister to China, who was returning home after his term of office had expired, to negotiate with the Portuguese government. The Chinese were prepared to buy back all the Portuguese houses and facilities in Macao with one million taels of silver, so as to restore China's sovereignty in Macao. Because of disturbances in Portugal, Don Sinibaldo de Mas failed to make his journey to Lisbon, and he died of illness the next year. So the plan was not realized.

At the same time, the national strength of Portugal was declined even further. Macao's economy was not improving, and relations between the Portuguese authorities in Macao and the British authorities in Hong Kong were deteriorating. The Portuguese authorities knew very well that Macao would be in serious trouble, if the Qing government should take even a few measures against their expansion. If the Qing government decided to attack Macao, it would be impossible for the Portuguese to defend the peninsula with their own forces. Therefore, the Portuguese government instructed the Portuguese authorities in Macao not to interfere in China's exercising sovereignty over its indisputable territory and territorial waters, so as to avoid provoking a Chinese retaliation. The Portuguese authorities in Macao often trimmed their sails when they encountered events that might irritate the top Guangdong officials. In 1868 and 1873, the Portuguese many times requested the Qing government to sign a bilateral treaty, so as to make the Qing government acknowledge their administration in the Macao Peninsula. The Qing government, however, had no intention of recognizing the Portuguese occupation of Macao. Therefore, quite a few Portuguese thought that a gloomy prospect awaited the "colony", which neither had a normal trade, nor was recognized by the Chinese government. Sooner or later, they thought, Portugal would either give it up to China or cede it to another Western country.

While the Portuguese colonialists were doing their utmost to carry out aggression and expansion, Macao's economy suffered a disastrous decline. Within a short period, Macao degenerated from a famous international trading port with a long history to a sink of iniquity.

After the Opium War, Macao was quickly squeezed out of the rank of important international trading ports. The main reason was the British occupation of nearby Hong Kong, and the Qing Government's opening five trading ports along the coast. The new ports usurped Macao's centuries-old special position in foreign trade. When Hong Kong was first opened as a trading port, it was no match for Macao, in spite of the fact that the British had announced that Hong Kong was a free port. The British took advantage of Macao's important place in international trade to build up Hong Kong. All announcements of land auctions by the British authorities in Hong Kong were placed in newspapers in Macao, so as to solicit the merchants of various countries doing business in Macao. The British also recruited a large number of labourers and purchased large quantities of materials and grain from Macao. Communications between Hong Kong and Macao were extensive; sometimes several ships shuttled between the two.

Before long, because of the British authorities' painstaking efforts, Hong Kong's advantage as a natural harbour were brought into full play. First, it was natural that the British merchants would no longer be willing to continue to live in Macao under the Portuguese roof; they moved to Hong Kong one after another. The merchants of other countries followed suit because of Hong Kong's prosperity. By 1845, the trade between China and Western countries was concentrated in Canton, Shanghai, Hong Kong and other places. Macao was a forgotten corner. The revenue of Chinese customs in Macao dropped from 30,000 taels of silver to 10,000 taels of silver annually, and the Portuguese customs revenue fell from 75,000 taels of silver in 1830s to 40,000.

In order to save Macao from decline, the Portuguese colonialists encroached upon China's sovereignty, and adopted a series of aggressive activities such as announcing Macao as a "free port", sealing off China's customs office and so on, but the result was the opposite of what they had expected. With the Chinese merchants leaving one after another, instead of reviving, the trade both with China and other countries was further reduced. As early as 1851, British records point out that Macao was in decline, and everything there had become devalued. From then on, the aging Macao was outshone by rising ports like Shanghai and Hong Kong, and was no longer an important international trading port.

Meanwhile, Macao's position as a place of residence and recreation for the Western merchants coming to China was shaken to its roots. After the Opium War, many places in China, including Shanghai, established foreign settlements or concessions where foreigners coming to China could stay. There was no need for the foreigners to hold stubbornly to Macao, so fewer of them resided there. But in the initial period of the building up of the Hong Kong urban district, a serious pestilence took place, so some Western merchants returned to Macao to escape it. Many Britons who had moved to Hong Kong missed the beautiful and clean houses in Macao, and they often returned to Macao for long visits. The British, including the officials in Hong Kong, sometimes went to the hospital in Macao, because there was no decent one in Hong Kong itself yet. There was no race course in Hong Kong either. The three horse races from 1842 to 1844 were all carried out in Macao. During racing season, the prosperity of Macao soared again.

The British authorities in Hong Kong, however, always pointed out that Macao was China's territory. The British regulation concerning consular affairs promulgated in 1844 reiterated that Macao belonged to China, and the British people enjoying extraterritoriality in China would not recognize the Portuguese authorities' jurisdiction in Macao. So the Portuguese authorities in Macao and the British authorities in Hong Kong often had disagreements. As a result, fewer and fewer Britons came to Macao and horse races were not held in Macao after 1845. In the summer of 1849, because a British teacher was arrested by the Portuguese authorities and a group of British marines raided Macao, the relationship between Hong Kong and Macao became rather strained from then on. The only British celebrities who stayed in Macao were George Chinnery, a famous painter, and his good friend, Thomas Boswall Watson, and others who loved Macao's scenery. According to contemporary statistics, in 1850, more than 1,000 grown-up males from Britain, the United States, France, Spain and other Western countries lived in China, but only twenty-odd of them resided in Macao, 2% of the total.

In the 1850s, a peasant uprising led by the Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui) broke out in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, and Guangdong province entered a period of protracted chaos caused by various wars. Even the Portuguese authorities once imposed a curfew in Macao, because the rebel army was manoeuvreing near Canton. As a result of the turbulence, the centre of trade between China and Western countries moved to Shanghai; with a lot of Westerners moving to the foreign settlement and concession in Shanghai, Shanghai became a paradise for Western adventurers. So few foreigners remained in Macao that many houses could not be rented out and the Portuguese lost a considerable income.

From 1842 to 1844, the cultural facilities such as the Morrison School, the hospital set up by the missionaries and the "Chinese Repository", which had moved from Canton to Macao during the anti-opium movement, moved to Hong Kong and other places one after another. For a long time after that, no influential cultural facilities were built in Macao. In the meantime, in the wake of the opening up of the ports like Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai, the Western cultures could spread to China through these trading ports and Chinese culture could also be directly disseminated overseas. Macao was no longer an important window for the cultural exchanges between China and the West.

Nevertheless, when the British had just occupied Hong Kong, in order to understand the Western conditions and circumstances, quite a few Chinese usually went to Hong Kong via Macao. Some people, such as the famous thinker Wei Yuan, who came to Guangdong in 1847, He Shaoji, who was the Provincial Examiner of Guangdong in 1849, and Zhang Yutang, the Commander of the Roc Brigade, who went to Kowloon to take his post in 1852, all wrote some poems in Macao. They provided the inland Chinese people with some vivid materials introducing things from the West. Especially worth of note is that a Portuguese called Jose Martino Marques, who had a good command of the Chinese language. He translated Western materials into Chinese and compiled them into a book entitled Xinshi Dili Beikao Quanshu (The Geographical Encyclopedia with New Explanations). Many materials introducing Western history and geography in the book were quoted by Wei Yuan in his enlarged and reprinted Haiguo Tuzhi (The Atlas of the Countries Overseas), which had a huge influence in China and especially in Japan.

The Vatican, which had been plotting for a long time, also seized the opportunity to step up its scramble for the remaining Portugal's patronage in China. In 1841, when Hong Kong was occupied by the British, the Vatican made Hong Kong a prefecture apostolic, separate from Macao, and appointed father Joset, who was serving at Macao for Vatican, its first Prefect Postolic. The angry Portuguese Governor of Macao demanded that Joset give up the appointment to recognize Portuguese patronage over Hong Kong, and spitefully ordered him to leave Macao within twenty-four hours when he refused. In the same year, defying the protests and obstructions of the Portuguese, Vatican appointed an Italian missionary, Louis de Besi, who had slipped into the Guangdong and Hunan region, as the bishop of Nanjing diocese, and stepped up its plan of separating Shandong from Beijing diocese, and Henan from Nanjing diocese. The principal of the Royal College of St. Joseph hurriedly reported these actions to Lisbon, and the King of Portugal appointed two professors from that college as bishops of Nanjing and Beijing. But in the end the missionaries of the Portuguese system were defeated after a long struggle with the missionaries from France and Italy. Joseph Joachin Miranda, who was appointed as Nanjing bishop, did not go to Nanjing to assume his post. The last Portuguese senior missionary remaining in the interior of China, Joao de Franca Castro Moura, was dismissed from the bishopric of Beijing diocese by the Vatican in 1846 and replaced by Joseph Martial Mouley, a French missionary. The Portuguese felt helpless, and their only measure of retaliation was to stop supplying funds to the above two dioceses. Portugal almost completely lost its patronage in the interior of China, ending the history of Macao as a base of spreading Catholicism in China.

After Macao lost its position as an important international trading port and the residence for Western merchants and lost customs revenue because it became "a free port", the Portuguese authorities in Macao and the Portuguese inhabitants fell into economic difficulties. Many Portuguese had to find new ways to make a living. Fortunately, new job opportunities were opening just at that time. The Portuguese began to provide protection for convoys of Chinese ships. Following the opening of five ports, trade in the southeast of China became more thriving with each passing day, but the Chinese naval forces had been destroyed during the Opium War, and the authorities lost the ability to control pirates. piracy was rampant along the southeast coast of China, posing a serious threat to the Chinese and Western merchant ships, especially to the lightly-armed or unarmed Chinese ones. The Portuguese seized this opportunity. They built a large number of lorchas, and began to provide escort service for Chinese merchants. This kind of lorcha, with twin masts, was both solid and fast with a deadweight capacity of 50 to 100 tons, and 150 tons as the maximum. Every ship had five to six Portuguese and ten odd Guangdong seamen and was equipped with four to six Western cannon; some carried as many as twenty cannon.

Because the pirates were afraid of Western cannon, they usually fled at the mere sight of the lorchas. At first, the Chinese merchants welcomed this kind of speedy boat whose fees could be negotiated freely, and often sought their escort. The Chinese officials in places like Ningbo even hired them to put down the pirates. In 1847, seven Portuguese lorchas mopped up the pirates around Ningbo. In the next year, sixty Chinese warships, with five Portuguese lorchas as the vanguard, further destroyed the hideout of the pirates. From then on, the Portuguese lorchas were welcome in these areas. When the British and French lorchas tried to win over the business, the merchants from Ningbo expressed that their preference for the escort provided by the Portuguese. The number of escort lorchas in Macao increased rapidly, reaching 60 by 1851, and nearly 200 by 1865, and escorting Chinese ships became an important profession of the Portuguese in Macao.

However, the good times did not last long. In order to make more money, some Portuguese adopted the method of collecting escort fees from all the ships going out to sea regardless of the wishes of the Chinese merchants, and extorted escort money from all the Chinese ships sailing along the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang. According to contemporary British statistics, in the Ningbo area alone, the Portuguese earned 50,000 silver dollars a year from the Chinese fishing boats, 20,000 silver dollars from log shipping boats and ships doing business with Fujian Province, and 500,000 silver dollars from other ships. Such activities aroused strong dissatisfaction among the Chinese officials and merchants. But the Governor of Fujian Province, Xu Jishe, who considered himself familiar with foreign affairs, and the Viceroy of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, Liu Yunke and others, thought that when checking all the treaties concerning foreign trade, there was no such a clause as prohibiting foreign ships from escorting Chinese ships. If the Portuguese were prohibited from escorting, no one could guarantee that no pirate ships would appear. Therefore, these Chinese officials did not intervene. Even when a foreign seaman from a Portuguese escorting lorcha murdered a Chinese inhabitant in November 1850, these Chinese officials handed over the arrested criminal to the Portuguese authorities in Macao for trial on their own initiative, which was very absurd indeed.

It was because of the muddleheadedness and acquiescence of the Chinese officials that some Portuguese became more and more presumptuous and greedy. What is more, the Portuguese consul to Ningbo, who was dispatched by the Portuguese without authorization, behaved in such a way that even the Americans, the British and other Westerners thought that he was overstepping the bounds. They were of the opinion that all the verdicts he made invariably sent most of the money and property into the pockets of his compatriots, and that he never strictly investigated any crimes committed by his compatriots. For instance, in September 1852, the Portuguese lorchas captured a ship carrying sugar. After investigation, the Chinese officials decided that the weapons found on board were meant for self-defence, but the Portuguese consul made his own investigation and insisted that it was a pirate ship and lawful booty of the Portuguese. The newspapers reported that he took over the ship himself and distributed the goods on board to the captors.

The Chinese officials and merchants in Ningbo were driven beyond the limits of forbearance. In 1855, for a large sum of money, they hired a group of pirates from Guangdong as escorts. The pirates did their job conscientiously and became an opponent of the Portuguese. In June 1857, the Portuguese had a severe conflict with the French competitors. The French on the one hand negotiated with the Portuguese authorities in Macao, and on the other, co-operated with the Guangdong pirates and reached an understanding with the British and Americans to wipe out the Portuguese lorchas moving about in the Ningbo area. The Guangdong pirates exerted themselves to the utmost, attacking the Portuguese lorchas ferociously. First, the pirates forced the Portuguese lorchas to retreat into the inland rivers. Then on June 25, with the help of the French warships, which sailed to Ningbo and kept the Portuguese gun-boats anchored there from supporting those lorchas, the Guangdong pirates pressed home their attack on the Portuguese lorchas. The Portuguese were utterly defeated and bloodily slaughtered. When some survivors fled to the French ships, the French arrested them as pirates and sent them to Macao to be tried.

The Portuguese kept up their escort activities for two more years. In 1859, under concerted pressure from the British and French and others, the Portuguese had to withdraw from the business, which had brought them huge profits. The numerous lorchas, idle now, quickly vanished like mist and smoke, with some leaving Macao and going far away, some highjacked by pirates and others blown up and sunk by the Portuguese themselves at the time of capture.

It was just at the time of the second opium war that the Portuguese escort activities ended. Because Chinese ports like Canton were blockaded and occupied by the British and French allied forces, the foreign trade of China could not be carried out in a normal way. As Macao became in reality a neutral port during the war, for some time, its trade revived somewhat. After 1860, when the second opium war ended, decent trade declined dramatically again, and the evil "coolie trade" became the main pillar of a superficial prosperity for a long time. The traffick in contracted Chinese labourers had stopped for some time around the Opium War and revived from about 1847. By 1866, the centre of the trade in labourers along the Chinese coast had moved to Macao. From this evil business, both the Chinese and Western traffickers in persons gained huge profits, and the Portuguese involved in Macao increased their income as well. Due to concerted opposition by the Chinese and Westerners, and under orders from the Portuguese government, the Portuguese authorities in Macao were forced to prohibit the contracted Chinese labourers from going abroad from Macao in March 1874. The various kinds of businesses related to the trafficking in labourers shrank quickly, and Macao's economy faced a crisis once more.

At the same time, Macao suffered successive natural disasters. The first calamity happened late on the night of September 22, 1874. At that time, an unusually strong typhoon swept through Macao. Ships big and small sank one after another and houses on shore collapsed block by block. In darkness, the victims of the disaster did not know how to escape. Screaming and crying resounded to the night sky. Some collapsed houses caught on fire, and the wind whipped the small fire into blazing flames, so that a large number of houses, including the Church of St. Antonio were burned down. The fire did some good: it illuminated the sky. So the boat people on the beach saw the danger and quickly moved their boats to safer areas, reducing the casualties. According to statistics, in this calamity, about 5,000 people in Macao died, 2,000 fishing boats and cargo ships sank, and a large number of houses in the best part of Macao were destroyed with a total loss reaching about two million silver dollars. Soon afterwards, on December 7, the prosperous district, where the Chinese shops were concentrated, caught on fire again, and twenty-odd houses burned down. On May 31 of the next year, Macao suffered another typhoon, in which a large number of ships were sunk or destroyed, the governor's office was seriously damaged and many inhabitants were killed or wounded.

With these successive disasters, the life of the working people in Macao became very difficult. Many lived in temporary shacks. The Chinese businessmen suffered heavy losses as well and had to ask the Portuguese authorities for exemption from taxation. The Portuguese authorities, who needed money badly, had to borrow money from the Shanghai-Hong Kong Bank to repair the official buildings and other houses. Macao experienced its another poorest moment since the Portuguese began to settle down here.

Macao found a way out of the economic impasse only because of the unprecedented thriving of gambling. Gambling had grown gradually from the late 1850s, and was closely tied to the traffick in coolies. The traffickers, rogues and gangsters were all gamble-thirsty, and made gambling a trap to lure the Chinese workers, forcing them to sell themselves when they failed to pay up. There were many varieties of gambling. The most popular was called "fantan", which still exists in the casinos of Macao today. The banker took a small portion of coins, beans or buttons from a pile of them and used a cup to cover the ones taken away, and then the gamblers put stakes on the four numbers of 1, 2, 3 and 4. Then the banker moved the cup away and counted the coins, beans or buttons in fours in the public eye. If the ones left in the end were two, then those who staked at No. 2 were the winners, and could get about three times of their staked money, while the rest was the loser. If one put stakes on more than two numbers at the same time, the gambling procedure was similar, but the way of calculation concerning the winner and loser was a bit different. Zheng Guanying, who was very familiar with the conditions of Macao, estimated that there were more than 200 gambling houses for playing "fantan" in Macao in 1850s-1860s. With the rapid decline in trade, the Portuguese authorities solicited those who wanted to run gambling houses and began to levy taxes from them so as to increase revenue. By the middle of 1860s, mainly through collecting gambling tax and opium-smoking tax, the annual revenue of Macao had increased to over 200,000 silver dollars of which more than 40,000 silver dollars were handed over to the treasury of Portugal.

When the ban of the coolie trade was imminent, the Portuguese authorities in Macao had a piece of luck, namely, the British authorities in Hong Kong strictly banned gambling after 1872. From then on, a large number of gamblers from Hong Kong came to Macao in groups from time to time, enabling Macao's gambling business to be even more prosperous. What made the Portuguese authorities even more happier was that in the summer of 1875, just when Macao was in trouble because of the repeated banning of the coolie trade, the merchants who managed "weixing" gambling moved their enterprises to Macao . "Weixing" gambling was a way of gambling on the result of imperial examination, which was started at the end of the Daoguang Emperor period (1821-1850). To put it briefly: first, the gambling managers published a list of the surnames of those who would take part in the coming imperial examination; the gamblers bought tickets for twenty surnames selected per ticket with 1,000 tickets forming one book. When the result of the examination was published, the gamblers used the book as units to calculate the number of surnames which had passed the examination, and to found out who had made good their guess and won the money. This kind of gambling became fashionable quickly in provinces like Guangdong and Guangxi. Whenever the year of examination came, the pooled gambling capital was no less than dozens of millions of silver dollars.

Besides other harmful effects, "weixing" gambling, the largest gambling in Guangdong, jeopardized the imperial examination, for the gamblers tried to control the result of the examination. The Qing government issued orders to ban it strictly. At the beginning of 1875, the Viceroy of the Two Guangs Yinghan and others lifted the ban on "Weixing" gambling without authorization, for they urgently needed money. As a result, Yinghan was impeached by the Governor of Guangdong, Zhang Zhaodong, dismissed from office and prosecuted. After his fall, the "Weixing" gambling managers were unable to get a foothold in the interior of China, and moved to Macao. The Portuguese authorities were overjoyed and welcomed them. The gambling managers opened gambling houses in Macao and sold tickets, and the gamblers and persons canvassing for tickets also swarmed into Macao, bringing the gambling business in Macao as a whole to its peak. The revenue of the Portuguese authorities was increased by a tax of hundreds of thousands of silver dollars from "weixing" gambling a year. As a result, they acquired more gun-boats, expanded their armed forces and stepped up aggression towards Long Wan, Long Tin, Mongha and other Chinese villages. The Guangdong authorities paid great attention to the "weixing" gambling managers's moving to Macao. Their attempts to intercept gamblers going to Macao to buy tickets caused a rumour in the autumn of 1876 that the Guangdong authorities were prepared to burn down the gambling houses in Macao. In response to the rumour, the Portuguese authorities had to strengthen Macao's defence.

In 1884, high military expenditure necessitated by the war with France. The Guangdong authorities could not even finance garrison' wages, so they thought of "weixing" gambling again. Pan Shizhao took the lead in presenting a memorial to the Emperor, saying that with "Weixing" held in Macao, the benefits fell into to the Portuguese pocket. Due to the urgent need of funds for coastal defence, he requested the court to lift its ban on "Weixing" gambling for the time being. The Viceroy of the Two Guangs, Zhang Zhidong, and other officials echoed Pan's voice at once, asking to retrieve "Weixing" and make the gambling merchants donate funds for military use. The "weixing" gambling managers also wanted to return to the interior as soon as possible, because holding the gambling in remote Macao, reduced their income from the gambling a lot due to the inconvenience for the gamblers. The merchants hoped to return to the interior although the Portuguese authorities tried every means possible to prevent them from leaving. In January 1885, with an approval from the Qing government, the "Weixing" gambling managers left Macao one after another, causing the income of the Portuguese authorities in Macao from gambling to plummet.

Nevertheless, "fantan" and other kinds of gambling games were still forbidden in Guangdong. Gamblers came to Macao in an endless stream, and gambling taxes were still the main source of financial revenue for the Portuguese authorities. Under such circumstances, it was natural that people would regard Macao as a city of gambling. Later on, people compared Macao with the famous gambling city Monaco, calling it the "Oriental Monte Carlo".

During this period, the smuggling and processing of opium ran neck and neck in prosperity in Macao with gambling. Before the end of the Opium War, Macao had become an important link in opium smuggling again. It was via Macao that the large quantity of opium from India and other countries was shipped to Hong Kong, which was occupied by the British army, and distributed to the provinces in the southeast of China, following the iron heels of the British army. After the Second Opium War, the Qing government allowed opium to be lawfully imported into China like other goods and duly taxed. But in order to evade taxes and to reap staggering profits, the opium-mongers assembled in Hong Kong and Macao continued to smuggle opium. In 1849, the Qing government moved the customs office from Macao to Changzhou near Canton. Since Changzhou was not on the thoroughfare leading to Macao, the new customs office existed only in name, and Macao became for a long time an important channel for the Chinese and Western profiteers to smuggle various kinds of goods, especially opium, into the interior of China. Meanwhile, Macao was also a centre for opium processing in the Far East. As opium at that time could not be smoked unless it was made into opium cream, many workshops were set up in Macao to extract opium creams. The processed opium was not only distributed to the interior of China, but also exported to Europe, the United States and other places. Through the opium processing and smuggling, the opium-mongers reaped huge profits, and the Portuguese authorities in Macao also shared the benefits by collecting opium taxes from the opium contractors.

The Guangdong authorities had long been aware of the severity of the opium smuggling problem. In 1868, the Viceroy of the Two Guangs, Ruiling, set up six stations to collect commercial taxes called "Lichang" around Hong Kong and Macao; two years later the name was changed to "Shuichang" (tax stations). The stations levied taxes, including an opium tax, on Chinese ships going in and out of Hong Kong and Macao. From 1873 on, the Guangdong authorities also sent patrol boats to arrest smuggling boats around Macao. In 1876, they forced the Portuguese authorities to give in, enabling the Chinese customs office to be moved from Changzhou to Xiaomaliuzhou, located along the only sea entrance to the Inner Harbour of Macao. All ships from the interior of China were ordered to pay taxes at this customs office for goods to be shipped to Macao from the interior or vice versa.

Although these measures had some results, the smuggling loopholes were still not completely closed. According to the British statistics, from 1883 to 1885, about 90,000 piculs of opium were exported to China, of which 20,000 piculs were smuggled. In the same three years, the quantity of opium imported to Macao was 9,295.2 piculs, 9,156 piculs and 10,392 piculs, about 9.9%, 10.6% and 11.5% of the national totals respectively. Of the opium processed in Macao, some was smoked by the local people, and some was exported to the United States and other countries, while some was sent to the interior of China legally passing through customs. But the smuggled portion was 4,188 piculs, 5,961.6 piculs and 6,513.6 piculs in these three years respectively, that is respectively 45%, 65% and 62.7% of the national smuggled totals. It can be clearly seen how rampant opium smuggling in tiny Macao was! Chinese people of that time often said that all that kept the Macao's economy going was opium and gambling.

Nevertheless, decent business carried on by Chinese merchants in Macao also developed. In the 1850s, when the area of the Two Guangs was suffering protracted disturbances, Chinese subjects, including many retired officials and gentry merchants, escaped to Macao with large sum of money. From May to June of 1857 alone, sixty ships carrying refugees entered Macao's harbour. With the coming of these Chinese inhabitants, not only did the Chinese population rapidly increase to about 50,000 or so, occupying the lion's share of the local population, but also the composition of the Chinese inhabitants in Macao was changed. The Chinese population had originally consisted of fishing folk, compradors, interpreters, employees of Western enterprises, peddlers and a few rich traders, but now there was a stratum of Chinese officials and merchants comparable to the Portuguese nobles. Among the Chinese gentry merchants, some returned to the interior after the end of the Second Opium War, while some regarded Macao as their second native place and bought estates and engaged in commerce there. They ran gambling houses, opium-smoking houses and brothels as well as invested in decent businesses.

The Portuguese authorities in Macao adopted a policy to use the Chinese capital in developing Macao. At the beginning of the 1860s, Chinese merchants bought a tea firm near the Inner Harbour from a Western merchant, and started to reclaim the coastal area there. This was the first large scale effort to reclaim land from the sea in Macao. After ten years' efforts, the blue rippling water had been replaced by blocks of building separated by wide, smooth and straight streets. Meanwhile, the Chinese merchants also established the first hospital, the first school, and the first theatre running by Chinese people in Macao. The foreign trade carried out by the Chinese merchants gradually became prosperous as well. The goods for export included rice, sugar, sea cucumber, oil etc.; tea and raw silk occupied the lion's share. In particular, the value of the tea exported reached over two million Pounds Sterling a year after 1870, and it reached nine million Pounds Sterling in 1879. In addition, the fish caught around Macao were salted and shipped to places like Canton in large quantities. In order to process these goods for export, the Chinese merchants set up workshops to make tea, salted fish and silk. They employed many male and female workers, who became the important component part of the working class in Macao in the later 19th century.

While the Chinese merchants were actively engaged in trade, the Portuguese merchants idled away their time, and quite a few of them deserted the declining Macao. From the middle of 1850s, most international trade in Macao was controlled by Chinese merchants, and in the 1860s, most of the shops in Macao were run by Chinese merchants. From then on, the Chinese merchants played a dominant role in Macao's decent economic activities.

Although these Chinese merchants had made painstaking efforts, they were unable to restore Macao to being an important international trading port. Part of the reason for their failure came from China. After the Second Opium War, the Qing government opened thirteen trading ports in the seven provinces along the coast and along the Yangtze River. In China's trade with foreign countries as a whole, Macao, a small port, naturally became less and less important.

But more critical reasons came from the Portuguese side. In the late 19th century, Portugal, once a major maritime power, was further declining itself. Instead of being able to rely upon its special position to gain any benefits in trading with Portugal, Macao failed to enjoy any preferential treatment from Portugal. From 1870 on, Portugal carried out a protective tariff policy, only providing the products from its colonies with a preferential treatment of large tax reduction. Tea, the main commodity shipped from Macao to Portugal, could not have such treatment in tax reduction because it was only processed, not produced, in Macao. Due to the discriminatory tariffs of Lisbon, the direct trade between Macao and Portugal was completely cut off, and Portugal even got its tea through Britain. At the same time, the Portuguese government combined Macao and East Timor into one "province", forcing the poor Macao to help the even poorer East Timor financially.

Meanwhile, the invasion and expansion activities of Portuguese authorities in Macao speeded Macao's decline. The Chinese authorities and people intensely resented the Portuguese invasion and bullying activities. The tense relation between the Chinese and the Portuguese could not but affect Macao's decent trade with the interior. Moreover, because the Guangdong authorities were unable to restore the customs office in Macao, they had to set up tax stations around Macao and station patrol boats to cope with smuggling. The Chinese officers and soldiers on the patrolling boats not only colluded with the smugglers, but also created difficulties for law-abiding merchants and blackmailed them, causing the honest merchants to complain, and regard going to Macao as a danger. Beginning in about 1874, they pleaded again and again with the Guangdong authorities to restore the customs office near Macao and even requested the Portuguese authorities to prohibit the Chinese patrol boats from patrolling near Macao. The situation did not change until the late 1880s.

In addition, the behaviour of the Portuguese authorities that caused the Chinese authorities to object to Macao's dredging of its harbour brought Macao even more harm. The Inner Harbour of Macao was at the outlet of the Xijiang River, which deposited large quantities of silt every year. Starting from 1860s, the problem of the harbour silting up steadily worsened. In 1865, the mooring place at ebb time still had three meters depth of water; in 1881, it was only 1.68 meters. According to a rough estimate made in 1883, the Inner Harbour of Macao would silt up completely in 25 years without dredging. At that time, as Portuguese authorities was steadily trying to expand the area of Macao's so-called "territorial waters", the Chinese authorities naturally did not allow them to dredge the Inner Harbour and the navigation channels at the Cross Gate and others, so as not to give them the excuse to make further expansion. Therefore, the harbours of Macao were getting shallower and shallower. Such being the case, even sailing ships of a slightly larger type were not able to sail in, not to mention the ocean-going ships of more than a thousand tons or ten thousand tons that were in vogue then. The goods shipped abroad from Macao, or to Macao abroad, had to go through Hong Kong. That the harbours of Macao were completely unable to meet the requirements of international trade was without doubt the deadliest hit to Macao's economy.

After the Opium War, the international and domestic situations changed. Instead of continuing to play a special role as an international trading port facilitating the exchanges of economy and cultures between China and the West, Macao was reduced to a sink of iniquity. The Portuguese colonialists should be mainly held responsible for this degeneration. Moreover, their unceasing activities of invasion and expansion caused the disturbances in Macao and its adjacent areas. Generally speaking, the continued Portuguese settlement in Macao in the late 1840s to 1880s contributed little either to Macao itself or to the communication between China and the West.

During the period when Macao was degenerating into a sink of iniquity, what was most harmful to its reputation was its being a centre for coolie trade for a long time. After the Opium War, on the one hand, some Western countries urgently needed large numbers of cheap labour force; on the other hand, due to China's a fast-growing population and social upheavals, China had a large number of surplus labourers who wanted to go abroad to earn their living. At that time, the Qing government had not canceled its ban prohibiting Chinese from going abroad, though Chinese officials mostly adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards such illegal actions. In 1845, Xiamen (Amoy) became the first centre to export large numbers of contracted Chinese labourers. About two years later, Macao also started to export Chinese labourers to Spain's colonies of Cuba and Peru and other countries that had just won independence from Spain. Houses for coolie to stay temporarily, called "piglets' sheds" or "firms selling human beings" by the Chinese, and "barracoon" by the Portuguese, began to appear in Macao.

The coolie trade at that time was atrocious. On the surface, these Chinese were contracted labourers wishing to go abroad of their own free will, but in fact, most of them were abducted. For each abducted Chinese labourer, the kidnapper could get three silver dollars, and later ten to forty silver dollars, from the worker-recruiting managers. When the Chinese labourers went aboard, each was worth at least sixty to seventy silver dollars. Abroad, each Chinese labourer's contract alone in the hands of the worker-recruiting managers was worth one hundred to three or four hundred silver dollars. And the Western capitalists using the Chinese labourers could extort more blood and sweat from them within the contracted period. Therefore, no matter whether they were Chinese kidnappers, foreign traffickers in human beings, the captains of coolie-carrying ships, overseas capitalists or the relevant Portuguese officials in Macao, who could get money from the trade, everyone involved, except for the labourers themselves, regarded the coolie trade as a profitable business.

The fate of the Chinese labourers, however, was very sad. A large number of Chinese labourers died of ill-treatment on the overseas voyage. After their arrival, a blood-curdling life of slavery awaited them. Therefore, shortly after the coolie trade started, incidents of Chinese labourers' killing captains and seamen, capturing the ships and returning to China, frequently happened. In the autumn of 1852, a British firm asked the British commercial official in China, John Bowring, to provide armed guards to protect the ships carrying the Chinese labourers from Macao. Before long, John Bowring also claimed that without the protection of the guardians, the Chinese labourers going abroad from Macao and other places could not be subdued. These requests and comments are enough to show the condition of the coolie trade at that time. But relatively speaking, as of the end of 1852, the scale of coolie trade in Macao was not very large. The death rate on voyage of the Chinese labourers starting from Macao was low, and there was no such incidents as Chinese labourers' capturing ships because of unbearable ill-treatment on the ships that set sail from Macao.

At the end of 1852, the people in Xiamen carried out a resolute struggle against the coolie trade. After this struggle, the foreign coolie traffickers were unable to gain a foothold in Xiamen for a while, and had to go to Shantou, Canton, Hong Kong, Macao and other places. Among the coolie traffickers, J. Tait, the most notorious British trafficker in human beings and concurrently the consul to Xiamen on behalf of several Western countries including Portugal, went to Macao. From 1853, a group of coolie traffickers of different nationalities assembled in Macao, making it an important port for the coolie trade, just like Shantou and Hong Kong. Two years later, the British implemented a bill about Chinese passengers, making some restrictions on the British ships that were allowed to carry Chinese labourers, which made the coolie trade in Hong Kong decline a bit. The trade in Macao prospered proportionally. According to Portuguese official statistics, 2,493 Chinese labourers went abroad via Macao in 1856; 7,383 in 1857; 10,034 in 1858.

In order to get such a large number of coolies, the traffickers penetrated deep into the interior of Guangdong or even provinces like Zhejiang. Especially the area around Huangpu of Canton became a world of terror. In that area, a large number of Chinese and worker-recruiting managers assembled together with Chinese boats and foreign pontoons where the Chinese labourers were kept. The Chinese labourers abducted from Canton and other places were shipped here first, and then sent to the Barracoon in Macao on small Portuguese boats when a certain number of coolies had been collected. Sometimes, when there were not enough Chinese labourers from the interior, the coolie traffickers kidnapped the peddlers, workers and servants who had came to Macao to earn their living, or lured them into gambling houses, forcing the losers to sell themselves to pay gambling debts. In 1855, Rong Hong, who returned from studying in the United States, witnessed the sad scene of abducted Chinese labourers being driven into the barracoon by the coolie traffickers. He described: Countless Chinese labourers were chained together with their plaits and led into barracoon. The sad scene of beast-like slavery was enough to send people to tears.

Just like jails, the barracoons where the Chinese labourers were kept had windows and doors grated with iron bars. Those who attempted to escape or refused to sign contracts would be beaten up and maltreated in the barracoons. Some were even beaten to death, or committed suicide because of unbearable torture. Sometimes, in one barracoon, more than ten Chinese labourers died in one day.

The contracts that the Chinese labourers were forced or deceived into signing contained some shocking stipulations. For instance, the Cuban recruiting contract had such clauses as: the working hours, except the time for sleep and meals, would be decided by the master according to the practice of Cuba in the light of the state of the work being carried out; the labourers had to abide by all the laws, regulations and discipline of Cuba with no violations and no objections. At that time, Cuba still had slavery, and its laws, regulations and discipline were all shackles cruelly suppressing and exploiting African slaves. Being required to abide by all these stipulations and denied the right to appeal, the Chinese labourers going to Cuba were in reality reduced to "yellow slaves".

The condition of the Chinese labourers on voyage from Macao was even worse. The captains of the ships carrying coolies always spared no efforts to squeeze into the ships' holds as many coolies as possible, so as to maximize their profits. It was extremely crowded in the holds; the air was filthy; there were epidemic diseases; food and drinking water were in short supply. In order to prevent the Chinese labourers from rebelling, the cabin doors and windows had iron grates; the crews were fully armed, and sometimes a small gun was mounted aiming at the cabin door. Whenever there was some resistance by the Chinese labourers, they would be beaten up, got shackled or killed. Such inhuman maltreatment caused a high death rate of the Chinese labourers on board. Starting from 1856, usually as many as 40% of the Chinese labourers going abroad from Macao either died of disease, committed suicide or got killed on board. In 1859, 270 out of 352 Chinese labourers on a ship sailing to Cuba died on the way: a death rate of 77%.

Such serious ill treatment forced the Chinese labourers into unceasing resistance. In February 1857, the Chinese labourers on board of the Dutch ship "Henrietta Maria" expelled the captain and crew from the ship and fled ashore soon afterwards. It was the first time a revolt had taken place on a coolie-carrying ship sailing out of Macao. Later on, there were unceasing revolts on coolie-carrying ships from Macao, even more than on ships from other ports.

To reduce malpractice in sending the Chinese labourers abroad and to avoid what had happened in Xiamen, in the four years from 1853 to 1856, the Portuguese authorities in Macao had laid down a series of regulations to prevent the abduction of Chinese labourers and to improve their treatment. For instance, the government took measures to control the barracoons, and made some necessary arrangements for the food supply and hygiene conditions of the Chinese labourers both in Macao and on their way abroad. All the labour contracts signed between the Chinese labourers and employers had to be registered with the Portuguese authorities in Macao, and the Portuguese officials would check both ashore and on board whether the Chinese labourers were really going of their own free will or not. The coolie brokers had to obtain licenses and guarantee to do their business, and if any Chinese labourer who went abroad as a result of abduction, the relevant broker would be punished according to law. If a Chinese labourer refused to go abroad after signing a contract, he was allowed to cancel the contract after paying back the recruiting fee to the person concerned. Because of prevalent malpractice, the Portuguese authorities in Macao sealed the unlicensed barracoons in 1859, and stipulated that the signing of a Chinese labourer's contract had to be witnessed by other two persons on the spot, so as to prevent anyone from assuming another's name.

These measures reduced the death rate of the Chinese labourers on the Portuguese ships, but had no other clear effect, in part because the coolie traders were both cruel and cunning. Before going to meet the Portuguese officials in Macao, they often cruelly beat the abducted Chinese labourers and forced them to state that they were going abroad of their own free will. While beating them up, the coolie traffickers would usually strike the gongs and drums loudly, so as to cover the wailing and shouting. Occasionally, some Chinese labourers were forced to agree to sign a contract at the time of beating up, but changed their mind and said before the Portuguese officials that they did not want to go abroad. But these Chinese labourers were beaten up so cruelly after returning to the barracoons that they would no longer dare to go back on their promise next time. Sometimes, the coolie traffickers would simply make someone assume another's name in signing a contract, and when the coolie-carrying ship was out on the sea, the abducted Chinese labourers would be sent on board to replace the ones who had assumed their names. The majority of the Chinese labourers going abroad from Macao were still abducted "piglets". In the meantime, the captains of the coolie-carrying ships always lied about the tonnage of their ships to have extra loading, and usually did not carry enough food, drinking water, medicine and doctors as required. The efforts of the Portuguese authorities did little to improve the condition of the Chinese labourers going abroad.

Another reason for the ineffectiveness of official efforts was that some Portuguese officials benefitted from such a trade. If they had seriously carried out the regulations concerned, they would have lost an important source of income. Quite a few regulations made by the Portuguese authorities were wantonly trampled down by those corrupt officials themselves. For instance, once six Chinese labourers tearfully told the Portuguese director of the port office, who came on board to make a check, that they had been abducted and asked him to let them disembark. Instead of fulfilling his duty, this Portuguese official ordered the captain to chain them up. On the surface, the Portuguese authorities made strict regulations about the coolie trade, but in reality, there were almost no restrictions on the trade at all.

However, as Xiamen, Shantou and other places were also engaged in notorious coolie trade at that time, Macao did not attract public criticism until the eve of the Second Opium War. During the Second Opium War, the British and French allied army occupied Canton. Coolie traffickers of various countries used this opportunity to wantonly kidnap Chinese labourers around Canton. The Canton people had to protect themselves, and killed quite a few coolie traffickers who were steeped in crime. Even the British officials in China realized that the safety of Westerners in China could hardly be guaranteed unless such monstrous crimes were checked. For this reason, and to squeeze out from Spain, Peru and other countries the coolie traffickers based in Macao, in April 1859, the British and French army forced the Governor of Guangdong Province to strictly prohibit abducted Chinese labourers from being sent abroad and to allow British businessmen to recruit in Canton Chinese labourers who freely wished to go abroad. Soon afterwards, in the "Convention of Peking" signed in Beijing in October of 1860, the British and French forced the Qing government to permit the British and French businessmen to set up offices openly to recruit the Chinese labourers who wanted to work in the British and French colonies.

The Portuguese authorities in Macao had to respond to this challenge. In January of 1860, acting on information provided by Viceroy Lao Congguang, the Portuguese Governor of Macao, Isidoro Francisco Guimaraes, found 430 Chinese labourers being carried secretly by the American ship "Messenger" from Huangpu to Macao, and handed over all these Chinese labourers to the Guangdong authorities. Later on, the Portuguese authorities promised that they would never allow coolies to be illegally shipped from Huangpu to Macao, and would never allow Macao to become a place providing cover for those who violated the Chinese laws in an organized way. They would put the coolie trade in Macao under a control system different from the past. In that same year, the Portuguese authorities set up a special supervisor for Chinese emigrants, and made regulations prohibiting the recruiting officers from jailing Chinese labourers to force them to repay the fees spent on their way to Macao.

After these new measures had been adopted, the coolie traffickers in Macao made some superficial improvements in accommodations and hygienic conditions in the barracoons to whitewash their shame. The Spanish, learning from the British and French, also set up offices in Canton to recruit Chinese labourers willing to go abroad. But in reality, the practice of abducting of Chinese labourers still had not been stopped. First, the Spanish and Peruvians did not have the rights to recruit workers in China. Besides going through the French recruiting offices in Canton and Shantou, they continued to kidnap Chinese labourers and send them through Macao. Second, the recruiting conditions of the British were far better than those of the Spanish and others. For example, Chinese labourers going to the British West Indies had a contract of five years with 7.5 working hours a day, and they could remit their salaries back home and communicate with their relatives in China. The Chinese labourers going to Cuba had a contract of eight years with twelve working hours a day. If the task was urgent one, the working hour would be even longer, and the labourers were cruelly treated in other aspects. Free emigrants who could afford the fare and the willing Chinese labourers almost all chose the British colonies. The Spanish coolie traffickers and their accomplices had to rely upon abduction.

Because many of the Chinese labourers leaving from Xiamen, Hong Kong and other ports were volunteers and their conditions aboard ship were somewhat better, fewer and fewer mutinies took place on these ships, while the revolts were still quite frequent on the ships departing from Macao. In March of 1866, an especially bloodcurdling incident took place on the coolie-carrying ship "Napolean Canavaro". The Chinese labourers revolted and tried to capture the ship because of unbearable ill-treatment. When many of them had been killed by the crew, they set the ship on fire. As the fire spread, the captain and crew hurriedly abandoned ship and fled without opening the iron grate jailing the remaining Chinese labourers, who were left to the mercy of fire. As a result, hundreds of Chinese labourers were burnt to death. This scene was just like the hell described by Dante Alighieri, so people began to call the coolie-carrying ships "floating hell".

At that time, the United States had already fought the Civil War and abolished slavery, and opposing slavery had become an irresistible historic tide. But the slave trade in a disguised form was still carried out on a large scale in Macao, so it was natural that Macao would be regarded as a hotbed of crime and subjected to humiliation.

In order to restrict evil kidnapping by coolie traffickers in China and to provide some protection for Chinese labourers going abroad, Prince Gong and other Chinese officials initialed an agreement, "The Treaty of Recruiting", with the British and French ministers to China, which had clauses concerning the capital punishment for kidnappers. Although the treaty failed to get the official approval of the British and French governments, the Qing government ordered the whole country to implement its stipulations; the British Minister to China, Rutherford Alcock, also told the consuls in various places to carry it out. The coolie traffickers in various ports were very nervous and rushed to Macao, making Macao the main centre for the coolie trade at last. According to contemporary records, in 1865, there were only eight to ten barracoons, and about 13,000 Chinese labourers went abroad from Macao that year. In 1866, the barracoons were increased to thirty-five or forty, over 24,000 Chinese labourers went abroad. By 1872, it was said that as many as over 800 coolie traders were doing business openly in Macao.

As the trade continued despite efforts to stamp it our, people from Vietnam and other countries were also abducted, tortured, and forced to become "Chinese labourers" who were willing to go abroad. In the summer of 1867, a group of "Chinese labourers" sent into the emigration supervision office was found to be Vietnamese officers, soldiers and crews, who were shipping tribute to their King. After they called out for help and explained to the people who came to rescue them that they had been looted by the pirates and did not want to go abroad. Finally, they were all released by the Portuguese supervisor. After this scandal, the Portuguese authorities in Macao set up a supervising committee for Chinese emigrants going abroad, and laid down a regulation that all the Chinese labourers had to stay at the dormitory run by the government for them for three days after they signed contracts at the emigration supervising office; in these three days, the Chinese labourers could tell the Portuguese officials whether they really wanted to go abroad or not at any time. In the meantime, all the barracoons had to let the Chinese labourers go in and out freely from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, so as to affirm whether these people were really Chinese labourers who wanted to go abroad of their own free will.

But the more illumination, the more temptation. The coolie traders tried to cope with these new regulations of the Portuguese authorities by more frequently using methods of tricking and menacing. They often deceived ignorant peasants, telling them that one year in foreign countries was only six Chinese months, and one silver dollar in foreign countries equalled two silver dollars in China, so that the illiterate peasants, who knew nothing about the contents of the contracts they signed, thought that they had made a good bargain. Or a coolie trader would pay a peasant several dollars to go through the check by the Portuguese officials on behalf of another person. The peasant would be told that the guy was quite willing to take the inspection and go abroad but for his sudden illness, and he would certainly replace the peasant assuming his name on board. When these peasants found out that they had been taken in, it was too late.

In this period, conditions in the barracoons improved somewhat and the doors were open in the daytime, but hired roughnecks usually stood on the both sides of the doors with big sticks and leather whips in hand; if the Chinese labourers should rashly go out, they would be beaten up. Those Chinese labourers who fell ill or did not tally with the standards to go abroad would be driven out of the barracoons right away. Because there was no money to travel home, quite a few of them died of poverty and illness. In 1871 alone, 348 corpse were found in the streets of Macao.

The Chinese on the ships continued to suffer astonishing tortures and revolts increased in frequency. What happened on the coolie-carrying ships of "Don Juan" and "Fachoy" shocked the world. Many Westerners pointed out that even the dark African slave trade in its prime paled before such horrible scenes. Moreover, the trade provided pirates with good opportunities. A number of pirates repeatedly went to Macao, disguised themselves as Chinese labourers and highjacked the ships on the way. Many coolie-carrying ships met this fate on the sea near Macao.

The Portuguese authorities in Macao tried to take the most effective and most severe means to cope with these problems. In 1868, when Admiral Antonio Sergio de Souza became the Governor of Macao, he adopted a series of measures to reduce malpractice in the coolie trade. From 1868 to 1872, the Portuguese authorities in Macao identified 15,138 abducted persons among 57,883 Chinese labourers and sent them home. During the three years from 1868 to 1872, the Portuguese authorities in Macao found out that 169 coolie traffickers had committed the crime of abducting Chinese labourers, and the criminals were punished with imprisonment or forced labour for three to six months. The great efforts of the Portuguese authorities were still far from enough to check the various kinds of crimes linked with coolie trade. In the end, the Portuguese authorities in Macao even admitted that Portugal did not have the strength to prevent the various malpractice from taking place in the course of shipping coolies abroad. Nevertheless, in order to keep alive the prospect of Macao's prosperity, the Portuguese authorities in Macao still would not give up this evil, but profitable business. So the Qing government called Macao "the root of trouble", and the Westerners regarded the coolie trade in Macao as a blight on European civilization.

The coolie trade centered on Macao harmed the interests of the British businessmen, both because they too urgently needed Chinese labourers, and because they wanted Chinese society to be stable and trade could developed smoothly. Beginning in late 1860s, the British constantly criticized the coolie trade in Macao. The Portuguese retorted that the system in Hong Kong was much the same, or even that the emigration business carried out in Macao was much more lawful than that in Hong Kong. The newspapers and magazines of Hong Kong and Macao attacked each other, exposed each other's secrets, and laid bare the fact that both the British and Portuguese businessmen and firms had reaped huge profits from the coolie trade in Macao. Once the Portuguese accused a newspaper in Hong Kong of insulting the King of Portugal and the former Governor of Macao, but quickly withdrew the charge to avoid incurring more humiliation, because the Hong Kong Supreme Court had denied Portugal's sovereignty over Macao from the very beginning.

When Hong Kong and Macao were verbally attacked each other, a new series of tragedies happened on the coolie-carrying ships from Macao. Moreover, the truth about the cruel slavery suffered by the Chinese labourers in Peru, Cuba and other countries was also increasingly exposed by the newspapers. So the Portuguese authorities in Macao cut a sorry figure before the public. In July 1872, the Japanese judicial organs found out that the Chinese labourers on the coolie-carrying ship "Maria Luz", which had left from Macao and sailed to Yokohama to take shelter from a storm, had all been abducted. This news once more stirred up world-wide condemnation of Peru and Portugal. So the Qing government notified various countries that countries without an agreement with China were not allowed to recruit Chinese labourers in China, while those with an agreement were not allowed to recruit in Macao. The Guangdong authorities sent soldiers to search steamers sailing from Canton to Macao to intercept the abducted Chinese labourers. The masses in Canton also took actions, refusing to ship grain and vegetables to Macao. The British government also co-operated, promulgating a series of regulations aimed at the coolie trade in Macao. In August of 1873, in accordance with a newly passed bill, the British Governor of Hong Kong ordered seven foreign ships to leave at once, which were installing equipment in Hong Kong and preparing to go to Macao to carry Chinese labourers. When the seven ships moved to Huangpu, Rui Lin, the Viceroy of the Two Guangs, issued an order forbidding the coolie-carrying ships of countries without labour recruiting agreements with the Qing government to anchor at Huangpu, and instructed the civil and military officials to put more efforts into arresting those who kidnapped Chinese labourers.

Because of these new restrictions, a number of the Chinese labourers abducted and taken to Macao dropped. Many barracoons stood empty, and several coolie-carrying ships had to anchor in Macao for a long time for lack of cargo. The Governor of Macao, Viscount de San Januario, realized that it was too difficult to maintain the coolie trade in Macao, and that it was bound to have disastrous consequences, if it did not stop. The Portuguese government also bore in mind the harm brought about by the coolie trade, and its negative effects on the reputation of Portugal and the real interests of Macao, the degeneration and corruption of Macao, and the open confrontation between China and Portugal. At last, on December 27, 1873, Portuguese government issued an order banning the recruitment of Chinese labourers in Macao. In the light of this order, the Portuguese authorities in Macao announced that recruiting Chinese labourers would be no longer allowed in Macao as of three months from the day of the announcement. The coolie trade that had lasted several decades and through which at least 200,000 Chinese labourers had been sold in Macao finally came to an official end in early 1874.

But the coolie traders still did not want to give it up. On March 27, 1874, the day on which the ban took effect, seven coolie-carrying ships, which had been forced to turn back, went so far as to protest by flying their flags at half-mast and firing "mourning" guns. On December 31, 1873, the Portuguese authorities in Macao promulgated the regulations about the Asian passengers' going abroad from Macao and their transportation, whose implementation was postponed for one year. The coolie traders seized the opportunity to try to revive the coolie trade under the name of carrying "free passengers", and turned the barracoons into "hotels" for Chinese travellers going abroad from Macao.

The British responded quickly; Viceroy Rui Lin also sent someone to Macao, demanding immediate closure of these so-called "hotels". At first, Viscount de San Januario tried to muddle through. Rui Lin sent a military officer to present a note to Januario and informed him that if there should happen such case as Chinese emigrants going abroad from Macao again, no matter whether they had stayed at the barracoons or "hotels", Chinese troops under the escort of gun-boats would land at Macao to destroy these "hotels" and arrest those who run these hotels and take them to Canton to be severely punished. Januario had to yield and replied that he had discovered that some bad persons having close relations with coolie traders mingled with those who ran hotels, and he had ordered all these hotels to close down. He also said that if the Viceroy of the Two Guangs should hear that anyone in Macao was attempting to abduct coolies again, he could very well send troops to Macao and the Portuguese army would certainly co-operate in suppressing this kind of illegal action.

By the beginning of 1875, shortly before the regulations about "Asian passengers" went into effect, a large number of notorious coolie traders had assembled in Macao with their assistants and a large amount of capital. Manipulated by them, the new acting Governor of Macao, Jose Maria Lobo d'Avila, at the end of January ordered the implementation of this regulation in April. The British officials in China, who closely watched the movements in Macao, reported to London at once, and the British government brought pressure on the Portuguese government immediately. At the end of March, the Portuguese government ordered the Portuguese Governor of Macao to ban transferring Chinese abroad from Macao at once, no matter whether they were contracted emigrants or free passengers. The coolie trade in Macao was not revived under the disguise of "free emigrants' going abroad".

But the abducted Chinese labourers or free Chinese labourers going abroad via Macao did not disappear completely. Especially in the 1890s, the number of Chinese labourers exported from Macao increase. In 1891, at least several hundred Chinese labourers went to Mexico via Macao. In 1893, the Brazilians set up recruiting offices called "Lihuazhan" and "Wanshengzhan" in Macao, recruiting Chinese labourers to work in Brazil under quite strict supervision of the Westerners. After all, the high tide of the coolie trade had passed.