Vue de Macao en Chine

Title

Vue de Macao en Chine

Description

Splendid total view of Macau, from the atlas 'Voyage de la Pérouse'

ca. 1790

Artist

Perousse,de La (1741-1788)

Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse was a French navigator, circumnavigator and geographer in the Age of Enlightenment. At the age of 15, La Pérouse went to Brest and started a career in the French Navy. The officers were divided into noble 'red' and bourgeois 'blue'. To make his career better, La Pérouse added a noble title to his family name de Galaup, which refers to a small family farm outside of Albi called La Peyrouse. The recent outbreak of the Seven Years' War led La Pérouse to Québec, among others. The return of the circumnavigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville to France in 1769 inspired La Pérouse to do similar things. From 1772 to 1776, La Pérouse sailed on behalf of the French governor in the Indian Ocean between the French-controlled colonies of Mauritius, Reunion, Pondicherry in southern India and Madagascar, where he completed his geographic knowledge. La Perouse took part in the American War of Independence on the American side for the French. He commanded a squadron and in August 1782 captured the Fort Prince of Wales without a fight and captured the English explorer Samuel Hearne there. La Pérouse was ennobled and promoted for special services on his return. Two ships - the Astrolabe and the Boussole - were equipped and a top-class team of scientists from the fields of astronomy, mathematics, geology, mineralogy and botany were assembled for the trip. Her mission was to study the geography of the Pacific and its trade opportunities there, from the far north to Australia, from Asia to America. On August 1, 1785, the two ships set sail from Brest. The first stop was Tenerife. Patagonia was reached in January 1786. Via Cape Horn and Easter Island we went to Hawaii and further to Alaska. La Pérouse, who was one of the enlighteners, was the first European to consciously refrain from taking possession of unexplored islands. In Alaska, he made important contacts with Indians before touring the California coast. Winter was used to cross the Pacific. In January 1787, the two ships landed in Macau. Now the so far little-known East Asian side seas, the Chinese Sea and the Japanese Sea, have been systematically researched and mapped, as well as the large Siberian Kamchatka Peninsula, which was interesting because of the wealth of fur. After Sakhalin and the Japanese Kuriles were explored, the South Pacific was headed for. On December 11, 1787, Samoa's second captain and close friend La Pérouses, the scientist Paul Fleuriot de Langle (1744–1787), was killed by locals.

Historical Description

Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It was a Portuguese colony until 1999. Macau's history is at least 6,000 years old. The place was originally settled by Chinese fishermen and farmers and leased to the Kingdom of Portugal in the mid-16th century. In the period that followed, the city developed into one of the most important trading centers between Asia and Europe. The trade in silk, spices and tea flourished and made Macau very prosperous. From the mid-19th century, a dispute between China and Portugal over 150 years over the political and legal status of Macau began. In 1845 Portugal unilaterally declared Macau its free port. At the same time, Great Britain annexed the island of Hong Kong, only 62 kilometers from Macau, to which Macau lost its supremacy in Asian trade. In response to international pressure, the Chinese Empire had to recognize the permanent occupation and government of Macau by Portugal in 1887. From 1892 the reformer Sun Yat-sen stayed in the city, so that Macau became one of the most important starting points of the Chinese revolution. Around this time, Macau developed into an appendage to the neighboring British colony in almost all economic areas. In contrast to Hong Kong, apart from a few temporary exceptions, the Chinese and Portuguese residents of the city lived in a symbiosis that was mutually beneficial. Negotiations about the return of the city to China, willing to compromise, took place between Portugal and the Republic of China as early as 1928, but remained unsuccessful in the course of the Chinese Civil War and the Sino-Japanese War. In 1999, Macau was reunified with China at midnight.