Portuguese Macau

Portuguese Macau was the Portuguese holding on the Pearl River estuary, under Portuguese rule from the establishment of the first official Portuguese settlement in 1557 until its handover to China in 1999 — both the first and the last European holding in China, comprising the Municipality of Macau and the Municipality of Ilhas. The Portuguese rented Macau as a trading post from China by paying an annual lease of hundreds of silver taels to Ming China, and the city grew into the great entrepôt of the China trade and the point of departure for Catholic missionaries to China and Japan — the Jesuits' Matteo Ricci entered the mainland from here. Chinese sovereignty was never surrendered in those centuries: Ming and Qing officials collected taxes on goods entering or leaving the city and controlled Macau's supply, and a mandarin's wrath could threaten to destroy the colony and evict all Portuguese from Macau. Only in 1887 — the era the map's record opens — did Portugal, with the diplomatic support of Great Britain, sign the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with China, which recognized and settled the Portuguese position. Through the 1500–1945 window shown on the map Macau stood neutral in the world wars: its population doubled during the Second World War with refugees fleeing the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, mainly from Canton and Hong Kong, while Japan respected the neutrality of Portugal. The handover to China came in 1999.