Cultural Affairs Bureau publishes the book Memórias, Viagens e Viajantes Franceses por Macau (1609-1900) [French Memories, Travels and Travellers in Macau (1609-1900)] by Ivo Carneiro de Sousa
In order to promote the study of Macao's history, the Cultural Affairs Bureau publishes the book in Portuguese Memórias, Viagens e Viajantes Franceses por Macau (1609-1900) [French Memories, Travels and Travellers in Macau (1609-1900)] by Ivo Carneiro de Sousa.
Almost a decade of primary research in central, regional, and private libraries and archives in France has resulted in this work, divided into four extensive volumes, which publishes and studies an impressive collection of 295 textual memoirs of Macao written between 1609 and 1900. Produced by the most diverse authors and editors, from prestigious maritime travellers to missionaries, soldiers, diplomats, Navy doctors, geographers, journalists, scientists or the first assumed tourists, these memoirs of Macao shed light on the most diverse aspects of social and economic life, the people and the spaces that made Macao an essential territory for France's access to the great empire in between.
These 295 memoirs have been diligently edited in volumes that, by unravelling authorship and refining their narrative meanings, also offer readers several other chapters in which the oceanic intellectual, diplomatic and political attention that brought France successively closer to Macao is studied using cultural history methodologies, culminating in 1859 with the active presence of its ambassadors appointed as plenipotentiaryministers in China, who transformed the French legation in the city into one of the main spaces of elite and cosmopolitan sociability at that time. If between 1857 and 1862 the French colonial offensive in Indochina and its military participation in the so-called Second Opium War really led to the construction of a military hospital in Macao, treating more than 2000 French injured people, France's profound interest in this small city in the Pearl River Delta mobilised a great deal of attention both from the daily press as well as from many scientific and literary magazines that, by crossing this unique library of 295 memoirs, help to understand how much the French idea of the city, its people and things contributed generously to support the cultural representation used to select what was to be highlighted as Macao's heritage and history in texts and images. Therefore, it is not even surprising that these texts were read by Portuguese authors so that they could find in them the cultural representation of Macao that prevailed.
Ivo Carneiro de Sousa is a professor, researcher, historian, and director of the East-West Institute for Advanced Studies (EWIAS). Doctor of Portuguese Culture (1993) and Associate of History (1999) from the University of Porto, he is a specialist in cultural and religious history, regarding the studies of Macau, Timor-Leste, and Southeast Asia.
Memórias, Viagens e Viajantes Franceses por Macau (1609-1900) [French Memories, Travels and Travellers in Macau (1609-1900)] is the seventh volume of the collection “Farol da Guia”, which is intended to study the culture, history and other aspects of Macao. Written in four volumes, the book is available for purchase at the Printing Bureau, Archives of Macao, Macao Museum of Art and Plaza Cultural Macau, among other sellers which are listed at https://www.icm.gov.mo/academics/en/sellingBook/, at the price of MOP 920. It is also available at the Cultural Affairs Bureau Online Book Shop (https://www.icm.gov.mo/bookshop).After placing the order, readers in Macao can select from 13 public libraries (in Macao Peninsula, Taipa and Coloane) under the Cultural Affairs Bureau to pick up their orders, while overseas readers will receive through the Macao Post and Telecommunications Bureau EMS service.
For further information, please contact the Cultural Affairs Bureau at 8399 6220 during office hours, or by email:publications@icm.gov.mo.