Tamão

Tamão was a trade settlement set up by the Portuguese Empire on an island, which was geographically a part of Hong Kong nowadays, in the Pearl River Delta in China. This was the first contact of Europeans with China via the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope.[1] The settlement lasted from 1514 to 1521, when the Portuguese were expulsed by the Ming Chinese navy.[2]

Background

In May 1513, the Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares arrived on the Chinese coast at an island in the Pearl River Delta they called "Tamão", whom some suggest was named after the Chinese name for the nearby coastal region of Tuen Mun, known to them as "Tunmen".[3] Tamão was fortified by Simão de Andrade and assaulted by the Chinese during the expulsion of the Portuguese in the 1520s. Nei Lingding Island is identified by J. M. Braga to be the Tamão of the Portuguese sources, and is widely followed by Western scholarship; however, recent Chinese scholarship finds this identification to be insufficiently proven, and suggests a number of other potential islands like the nearby but larger Lantau Island.[4]

See also

References

  1. Construction of Lung Kwu Chau Jetty - Cultural Heritage Impact Assessment
  2. Porter, Jonathan (1996). Macau, the Imaginary City: Culture and Society, 1557 to the Present. Westview Press. ISBN 0813328365.
  3. Braga, J. M. (1956). "China Landfall 1513, Jorge Alvares Voyage to China". Macau: Imprensa Nacional. OCLC 10673337..
  4. Jin, Guoping (2000). Xili dongjian : Zhong-Pu zaoqi jiechu zhuixi 西力東漸 : 中葡早期接觸追昔 (PDF) (in Chinese). Macau: Macao Foundation. pp. 21–42. ISBN 9993710075.
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