At midnight tonight half a millennium of history comes to an end. The last European colony in Asia is to be handed back to China by the government of the first colonial presence in the region.
Asian values triumphalists of the Mahathir Mohamad stamp might see this as freighted with symbolism, the end of half a millennium of European meddling in the affairs of Asians, marking the relative decline and introversion of the former and the coming to geopolitical maturity and particularly economic significance of the latter. But that is almost certainly more symbolism than Macau, that final colony, feels its due. And Macau's history itself shows that there never was a single form of European colonial power in Asia just as there is no unified Asian power ready to emerge in the new millennium.
The Portuguese were the first colonial power in Asia, just as at midnight tonight they will become the last to leave. They were first because, quite simply, they were better sailors than anybody else; they were the first to be able to find their way across oceans at a time when sailors hugged shorelines so as not to get lost.
Having discovered the sea route to India in 1498 they established bases in Goa in southwest India, Malacca in Malaysia and, finally, in 1557, after two decades of involvement in regional trade around the Pearl River delta, they established a settlement on rented land in Macau.
And here is the first great difference between the Portuguese and the later British interlopers into the area. Macau was established as a result of negotiation with China, unlike Hong Kong, seized as the booty of war. For both these colonies, perhaps in their beginning was their end. For Macau returns to China tonight as the result of an amiable agreement between Lisbon and Beijing, while Hong Kong's handover two and a half years ago was steeped in rancor.
Another difference between Macau and other colonies was that the Portuguese never really used the enclave as the basis for expansion into the hinterland. Calcutta allowed the British, by guns and by guile to become the masters of Bengal; Hong Kong allowed them to expand their influence via the so-called "treaty ports" throughout coastal China.
Macau never had this kind of a hinterland, not perhaps because the Portuguese were not aggressive enough -- they had shown plenty of ruthlessness in colonizing Brazil -- but because 16th century China was far too strong.
With territorial conquest out of the question, Macau might have been abandoned were it not for the Ming Dynasty's ban on Chinese engaging in seaborne trade. The Ming reasoned that everything China needed China produced, and foreign trade was only an invitation to piracy, so ban it.
Actually there was one thing that China did not produce nearly enough of and for a century the Portuguese were essential middle men for it, namely silver, so precious it was worth almost as much as gold. The Portuguese bought silk and porcelain in China and shipped it to Japan where such items were in huge demand, then filled up with cheap Japanese silver and returned to China to reap huge profits.
In the end this extraordinarily lucrative trade would have fallen victim to the more open Chinese maritime regime of the Ching. But it was actually killed off by a squabble over converted Japanese souls.
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