Review:

Catherine S. Chan: The Macanese Diaspora in British Hong Kong A Century of Transimperial Drifting, Amsterdam University Press,  2021

I should say at the start that Catherine Chan and I have collaborated on an article about the Macanese in the Hong Kong occupation. However, I don’t believe this has unduly influenced my favourable opinion of her book: in the only other review published so far (in the Asian Review of Books) Peter Gordon writes thus:

Although an academic text and fully sourced, Chan is a fluent writer; the book is rigorous yet readable. She manages the tightrope between anecdote and data, between vignette and analysis: her examples always seem to illustrate a broader point.

I concur, and will offer further reasons for thinking that The Macanese Diaspora in British Hong Kong will prove a seminal text in the field of Macanese studies.

Why?

Firstly it’s wide-ranging and academically ambitious.

The reason I suggested to Catherine Chan that we worked together was my admiration for her thesis – ‘Empire’ Drifters: The Macanese in British Hong Kong, 1841-1941. These days many doctoral dissertations are narrow in focus and ambition – they treat a limited subject and they play it safe by sticking to orthodox historical ideas and approaches. Chan’s thesis, in contrast, was wide-ranging – it covered the Hong Kong Macanese community from its origins in the 1840s up to the outbreak of war in 1941. Just as impressive was the confidence with which she set about challenging received historical ideas, for example with regard to the effects of colonial racism on the community, an issue I discuss below.

The book under review builds on this thesis while adding important new material, for example relating to the complex nature of questions of ‘identity’ both in Hong Kong and in the post-WW11 diaspora.

Secondly, it transforms our view of the community and its colonial experience.

So what about Chan’s account of the impact of colonial racism?  She doesn’t deny that the Macanese – a largely Eurasian community who typically held Portuguese nationality when migrating to Hong Kong –  suffered from British arrogance and discrimination. In fact, as well as making good use of the memoir by Dr. Eduardo Gosano which I discussed in a 2017 post on racism, she provides compelling new evidence of discrimination, both in attitude and in compensation, from the archives of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, an institution which employed many members of the community. Nevertheless, Chan insists that not every set-back the Macanese suffered as a group or as individuals was the result of racism. She  attempts to prove this by revisiting two cases of Macanese who might on the face of it have felt that their careers were impacted because they were not ‘white’ British.

Chan reveals, I think for the first time, that the Colonial Office in London had actually suggested the appointment of Leonardo d’Alamada e Castro, a Eurasian who did not hold a British passport, as Colonial Secretary. Nevertheless, Leonardo, the best known of the two cases, did not get the job. Chan argues that this was not mere racial or national prejudice. The people on the spot thought that the fact that he was not British posed a genuine constitutional problem that London did not fully grasp and, in any case, he was not “‘of sufficient weight’” for the job.

I am in sympathy with Chan’s overall position: to assume that if a society is racist there is no need to seek further explanation of any failure on the part of individuals from dominated ethnicities can lead commentators to miss the real dynamics at play in determining historical outcomes. However, I was left wondering if, in the case of such a deeply discriminatory society as nineteenth century Hong Kong, an either/or approach is the most powerful – either d’Almada e Castro was not appointed Colonial Secretary because of racism or because he lacked ‘’’weight’’. Perhaps the idea of overdetermination is more useful. This concept was borrowed from Freud and applied to social phenomena by the French philosopher Louis Althusser. If applied in this case, it would mean that Leonardo d’Almada e Castro and Alexandre Grand-pré, the other Macanese administrator Chan discusses, didn’t get their promotions because of their inadequate qualifications, but they would have been denied them anyway because of racism! In other words, both prejudice and imperfect CVs were to blame.

In spite of this reservation, I have no doubt that Chan’s discussion of racism recasts our understanding of the Macanese relationship with British colonialism. It opens the way to seeing them as a group which was able, in the teeth of disrespect and discrimination, to carve out a satisfactory community ‘world’ in their new home. The Macanese, she argues, had generally good relations with the colonial government and we should not see them as people who should have  resisted the established order but failed to do so out of lack of political understanding or initiative. Some did protest, of course, and Chan discusses the case of José Pedro Braga, an early and powerful critic of British arrogance. But Braga remained loyal to, even celebratory of, the British empire and Chan’s discussion suggests that he and other Macanese knew their own business best – their position in Hong Kong was, in spite of its subordinate nature, a comfortable one. Employment prospects for the young and for newcomers were good, at least until the arrival of the global depression in the 1930s, and on this solid economic basis the Macanese constructed a vigorous social and cultural life. Chan illustrates this in various ways, for example by offering a detailed account of the history of the Club Lusitano, the oldest and most prestigious Macanese institution.

But, in another surprise, she sets out to show that an apparently homogeneous community was riven by internal conflicts based on class, culture and identity.

The conventional view was the one I myself held before encountering Chan’s work. The wartime sources I had consulted suggested a thoroughly Anglicised community. The British Consul in Macau, John Reeves, noted, with disapproval, that most of those who sought refuge from the Japanese in the Portuguese enclave were familiar with the British national anthem but not with the Portuguese. Further, those who stayed behind in occupied Hong Kong were, at great personal cost, almost totally loyal to the Crown.

There is indeed no doubt that by the end of WW1 many Macanese had become thoroughly Anglicised. Chan discusses this process, which seems to have been driven by a straightforward economic motive: people were in Hong Kong to work and mastery of the English language and culture was the way to maximise job opportunities. Nevertheless, Chan shows for the first time (in English at least) that Anglicisation wasn’t the whole story. Her discussion of the ‘Portuguese’ tendency in the community is fascinating.

The Liga Portuguesa was set up in 1929 to counter what its founders saw as the ‘denationalisation’ of the Macanese – their rejection of Portuguese history, allegiance and culture. The  Liga offered Portuguese classes, used its publications to stress the glories of Portuguese history and the merits of the Salazar Government, and tried to create a pan-Macanese identity uniting the diaspora throughout Asia. This enterprise became intertwined with a class conflict between the established upper middle class, who generally lived on Hong Kong Island and ran the colony’s premier Macanese institution, the Club Lusitano, and the less socially elevated newcomers who tended to live in Kowloon. This was to some extent a gender conflict too, as the Club Lusitano was male only, while the rival Kowloon institution, the Club de Recreio, was open to women. It also welcomed the younger element, making it easy for supporters of the Liga to set up a dichotomy between a dynamic and inclusive vision encompassing all Macanese and emphasising the community’s Portuguese roots, and its ‘denationalised’ rival, whose implicit ideal was a community dominated by well-heeled older males who had long since abandoned their heritage in favour of the culture of the British!

This view of the Macanese as a site of vigorous cultural debates is new, and Chan provides enough well-sourced detail to convince me of its fundamental correctness. However, her account also suggests that these battles were fought within limits: the Liga faction were only anti-British in a cultural sense, while the Lusitano honoured things Portuguese in name at least. Some people were involved with both Clubs, and, as Chan shows, by the outbreak of war in 1941 the two factions were largely united. She might have emphasised this more, although it is understandable that she should wish to stress the novel elements revealed by her research.

In any case, this material is of importance not only to students of Hong Kong and of the Macanese but also to those interested in the rise of nationalism in the 1930s and in particular its manifestations in diasporic communities.

Thirdly, Chan’s account of the Macanese in Hong Kong and her remarks on the diaspora offers much original material and a subtle analysis of ‘identity’.

As Chan showed in her thesis, the Macanese ‘drifted’ between empires – the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British – and eventually out of Hong Kong into an increasingly post-imperial world. Naturally, people sometimes asked themselves who they were – a question very much on the mind of those who founded the Liga Portuguesa, for example. Chan shows throughout her book the flexibility with which the Macanese negotiated the different social situations they encountered in Hong Kong and beyond. She sees identity construction as ‘a continuous process of reinvention’ as individuals and communities mobilise their cultural resources to meet new challenges. The book illustrates both the diverse situations the Macanese encountered in Hong Kong and the creative ways in which they responded. Chan’s analysis of identity will be of interest to all those concerned with this complex and often controversial question, as it is not only conceptually subtle but also grounded in the detailed historical discussions that are the core of the book.

Conclusion

This is a rich work and I do not have the space to indicate all of the areas it illuminates.  Chan has given us what must now be considered the most important account of Hong Kong’s Macanese community. Any scholar writing on this subject in the future will be forced to reckon with this book in the full range of its arguments, while any general reader with an interest in Hong Kong and its Macanese people will find it both accessible and illuminating.