ABSTRACT
Between the 16th and the 18th centuries, European embassies to China came along a sea route that brought them not across central Asia but to China's southern ports. They hoped to tap into China's fabled wealth as well as its seemingly limitless market for European products. Period maps of the regions traversed by Portuguese ships clearly depicted padrões and other European icons of possession, as, for example, on charts of the western and southern coasts of Africa. The structures that the Portuguese began to fashion, in other words, were not designed simply to protect them from piracy or to provide a place to store money and goods during or between trading seasons. It was apparent to Chinese observers, as well, that the Folangji were interested in taking control and perhaps trying to seize territory, just as they had done in Malacca or at numerous other sites.
