Added to your basket:
Coisas de Macau.

Checkout now

Rare first edition of this early twentieth-century account of Macao by an ex-Governor of the Portuguese colony.

Governor of Macao from 1910 to 1912 and a prominent figure in the Portuguese Scout Movement, Machado begins by lamenting the little interest shown by the Portuguese in their overseas possessions. The present work, he writes, has ‘no other aim than to win some sympathy for the Portuguese establishment in the Far East and to make it better known’ (trans.). Aided by some sixty maps and illustrations, Machado then embarks on a tour through Macao’s history, climate, resources, major sights, government and administration, local customs, and principal challenges.

Among the last is the question of nationality and identity, to which he devotes an interesting passage: ‘Wholly abandoned by the Portuguese government, and through contact with a more vivid and assimilative nation, the Macanese, starting by forgetting their mother tongue, are losing all sense of national identity and are, sadly, becoming English. … Such is their denationalisation that even many of the children born and raised in Macau speak English more easily than Portuguese’ (trans.).