Revisiting Malacca and Macao
Now that I am older and presumably wiser, I want to revisit places I didn’t think much about when visited in my youth. Offhand, the two nearby places that may have connections to the Philippines are the former Portuguese settlements of Malacca and Macao.
First on my list is Malacca, a short bus ride from Kuala Lumpur, which became relevant to me in 2021 when I was reading up on the 500th anniversary of the Magellan expedition. That Magellan sailed into the Philippines was no accident, he had heard of the islands in Malacca. Then there is the story of Magellan’s slave, Enrique de Malacca, which has taken on a life of its own without primary source documentation aside from the unsavory reference to him in Antonio Pigafetta’s chronicle of the Magellan expedition. Some people imagine Enrique to be Malay or even Visayan. If he was indeed Visayan, taken by slave raiders and sold to Magellan in Malacca, then he is the “First Filipino to circumnavigate the globe.”
Macao is a place many Filipinos associate with casinos and gambling. Although it is a short ferry ride from Hong Kong and there are even direct flights from Manila, I never thought of revisiting a place whose only interest for me lay in the ruins of an old church. We must remember that in the 16th century, Portugal was a rival of Spain in the so-called “Age of Discovery and Exploration.”
Malacca was under Portugal from 1511 to 1614, while Macao was so from 1557 till it was handed over to China in 1999. The Spanish and Portuguese kept maps and geographic materials from each other as closely guarded secrets and I am sure that a Filipino historian who can read Portuguese will have a lot of archival material waiting for him in Malacca, Macao, and the Tore de Tombo in Lisbon. One of the maps coveted by Filipino collectors is the 1595 map of Asia by Jan Huygen van Lischoten. Many map catalogs state that Linschoten’s map published in Amsterdam used “information stolen from the Portuguese.”
Macao came to mind during the Chinese New Year because I wrote a post on Instagram and Facebook about the Panciteria Macanista de Buen Gusto (Macanese Panciteria of Good Taste) referenced in Chapter 25 of Rizal’s second novel ”El Filibusterismo.” I always thought Rizal made this up until I saw a prewar photograph of the approach to Binondo Church from a bridge where you can clearly see a sign on the wall of a building that proves Rizal referenced an actual panciteria. Whenever I take aimless strolls in Binondo and San Nicolas, I always cross the bridge in the photo toward Binondo Church wondering if the abandoned old building on the left side of the road is the actual Panciteria Macanista. If not so, can it at least be the actual site where the Panciteria Macanista once stood?
While preparing for a Chinese New Year column, I came across a reference to Macao and the Philippines in Jean Mallat’s two-volume work published in Paris in 1846. Not all sets can be found with the separate “Atlas” quite rare and coveted by bibliophiles for its maps and prints. I don’t know why some old books come with kilometric titles. Translated from the original French Mallat’s title page reads: “The Philippines: History, Geography, Customs, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce of the Spanish Colonies in Oceania by J(ean) Mallat, Knight of the (French) Legion of Honor, Member of the Geographical Society and of Several Scientific French and Foreign societies. Paris Arthus Bertrand … 1846.” Mallat wrote a book for Europeans who wanted to do business in the Philippines. It comes with historical and ethnographic information and details on distances and sailing times, even customs and tariff rates.
According to Mallat, much of the commercial exchange between Macao and the Philippines was paddy rice transported on about 25 ships per year. International trade was restricted except at the ports of Manila and Zamboanga. The Spanish looked the other way when ships came from Macao, such that they could unload in Currimao in Ilocos and Salomague where fine rice was to be had. Other open ports were Pasacao, Sorsogon, and Capiz with ships traveling during the six-month window of the northeast monsoon known to Pinoys as “amihan.”
Aside from rice products, Manila’s exports to Macao included: balate, salanganes, (bird’s) nests, “zibis” (that I think is “hebi” or dried shrimps), buffalo hide, logwood, cotton, deer sinews called “nervios de venao,” shark fin, ebony (kamagong), molave, mother of pearl, liquid indigo “tintoron,” gold dust, etc.
As for the imports from Macao, Mallat provided a long list of the cargo of a Chinese sampan that arrived during his stay. From the list, I picked out the following: covered jars of garlic and salted radish (buro?), “agua mala” whatever this “bad water” is, Chinese oil, red rice, pearls, 50,000 sewing needles (!), fans of paper, bamboo and cloth, small buttons for Chinese shirts, knives, trays made of lacquered wood or baskets, varnished pottery, spoons of wood and iron, bells, banana flowers, chestnuts, Chinese cards, etc.
This list of imports from Macao is not trivial, it reflects the tastes, wants, and needs of the 19th-century Philippine market.
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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu
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