Official Records of Macao during the Qing Dynasty (1693–1886) — Chapas Sínicas

The Chapas Sínicas (東波檔) are one of the most remarkable documentary collections linking Europe and China. The archive comprises more than 3,600 documents, produced and received by the Procuratorate of the Leal Senado of Macao over nearly two centuries, between 1693 and 1886, and today kept at the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon. On 30 October 2017, this collection was inscribed on UNESCO’s International Memory of the World Register, in a joint nomination by the People’s Republic of China and Portugal — one of the rare cases in which two states share responsibility for a single documentary heritage.

An archive of the administration of Macao

The name “chapas” derives from the term used for the official documents exchanged between the Portuguese authorities of Macao and the Chinese mandarinate; “sínicas” refers to their Chinese origin and language. The collection brings together more than 1,500 official letters written in Chinese, five volumes containing copies of the Portuguese translations kept by the Leal Senado, and several bundles of loose documentation. The bulk of the holdings consists of correspondence between the procurators of the Leal Senado and the representatives of the Celestial Empire in the neighbouring region of Xiangshan, in Guangdong province.

These records are no mere administrative papers. With bureaucratic precision, they document the daily life of a frontier city: maritime trade, the supply of provisions, the levying of taxes, the movement of people, jurisdictional conflicts and Christian missionary activity. Taken together, they paint the portrait of a society in which two political orders — Chinese sovereignty and the Portuguese presence — coexisted in a balance negotiated case by case.

The encounter of West and East

Few archives show so concretely how dialogue between civilisations was conducted not in grand treaties, but in the patient, daily exchange of dispatches between officials.

For centuries Macao was a singular meeting point between the European world and the Chinese world. The Chapas Sínicas bear witness to this hinge-like condition: they reveal how the Qing dynasty managed its relationship with the “barbarians” of the West and how Macao functioned simultaneously as a commercial entrepôt and as a diplomatic forum. For historians, the collection is a first-rate source on European expansion in Asia and on the transformations of Chinese society during the long period preceding the decline of the Qing Empire.

The value of the collection also lies in its bilingual nature. By preserving the Chinese originals together with their Portuguese translations, the archive makes it possible to compare two ways of recording the same event — a rarity that turns the Chapas Sínicas into a laboratory for the study of translation, diplomacy and intercultural administration.

Recognition by UNESCO

The path to international recognition unfolded in two stages. In May 2016, at the 7th General Meeting of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP), held in Hue, Vietnam, the collection was inscribed on the regional register. The following year, in 2017, it rose to the International Memory of the World Register, joining other Portuguese documentary treasures distinguished by the programme, such as the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Corpo Cronológico and the journal of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage.

The inscription reinforces the role of the Torre do Tombo as guardian of holdings of global reach and places the Chapas Sínicas within the vast body of world and documentary heritage associated with Portugal, underscoring a shared history that continues to bind Lisbon and Macao.