ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the modern history of Macau by focusing upon its initial settlement. Global destiny took a fateful turn in 1553 when Chinese officials in Guangdong Province allowed Portuguese merchants to establish a trading outpost on a narrow isthmus. Macau soon blossomed into an economic and cultural entrepot, the hub of a Maritime Silk Road that connected Asia and Europe. The Macau Basic Law begins by asserting that “Macau, including the Macau Peninsula, Taipa Island and Coloane Island, has been part of the territory of China since ancient times. The Portuguese were permitted to stay at Macau because of its advantageous geography for both sides. The original peninsula extended south from Guangdong Province via a thin bar of sand roughly "two kilometers long and ten meters wide, like the stalk of a lotus". Macau was host to discrete Chinese and Portuguese communities almost a century before the Treaty of Westphalia created the notion of a modern nation-state.
