Shadows of orientalism in Portugal: some notes on theories and practices in Macao early narrative images (16th and 17th centuries)

Imperial Portuguese imagery unveils three discursive tropes as primordial signs of the representation of an idea of empire – the cross, the crown and the sphere. These three signs embody the representation of the Portuguese monarchy since the remote 16th century and play a role in the building of an Orientalism in Portugal. Having in mind the notion of Orientalism as an ongoing conceptual building, I will approach the first narrative images of Macao that emerge in reports about the Portuguese presence in that space. My focus will lie on Duarte Barbosa’s and Tomés Pires’ texts, and on Fernão Lopes de Castanheda’s and Gaspar da Cruz’s chronicles, in order to show how space summons the imagery of a historical time. In these texts, we are not yet before an idea of progress, since they only confront the different, either incorporating or rejecting it.