1. Cranmer-Byng, J. L., An Embassy to China, Longmans, 1962, 211Google Scholar. This work contains the full text of the journal which Lord Macartney kept during his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung, from his arrival off the coast of South China in June, 1793, until his arrival in Macao on his homeward journey in January, 1794.

2. Ibid., 112 footnote.

3. Ibid., 314.

4. These reports are preserved among the Macartney documents of the Wason Collection on China and the Chinese in the Library of Cornell University The reference numbers of individual documents in this collection are shown in square brackets after each item.

5. Sir G. L. Staunton was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1787. For Staunton and Barrow see Cranmer-Byng, J. L., op. cit., 307–9.Google Scholar

6. Cranmer-Byng, J. L., op. cit., 63–4.Google Scholar

7. Preserved in the British Museum Add. MS. 19822, Article 2. Also under the same reference are plans made by Lieut. Parish from the manuscript plans and charts supplied by the Spanish agent, Agote, as follows: The inner passage from Macao to Canton (art. 3); the peninsula of Macao (Art. 4); the fortress of Macao (arts. 5 and 6). I am grateful to Mr. P. D. A. Harvey, Assistant Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts, for this information. Although it would have been possible to reproduce the plan of Macao made by Lieut. Parish photographically the details would have been too small to be easily legible. Instead the plan printed on page 136 has been made from a photocopy of the original by Mr. A. Shepherd of the Department of Geography and Geology in the University of Hong Kong. Part of the original has been omitted, and the figures giving the depth of the sea have also had to be omitted. The plan reproduced here should be compared with the one engraved in the folio volume of Sir Staunton, G. L.'s An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China… (London, 1797) plate 11Google Scholar. This plan differs from the original somewhat. For instance it gives references to 37 places shown on the engraved plan instead of only the 16 shown in the manuscript, and it also omits the reference to the fact that Parish had copied it from a plan made by Manuel de Agote. The legend which Parish supplied for his plan is printed in the form of a note on page 149.

8. Macartney documents in the Wason Collection on China and the Chinese, Cornell University, document 371, pp. 45–54. I wish to thank the Director of Libraries, Cornell University, for permission to quote this document in full.

9. The names of places in Macao mentioned in this document are given in a Spanish form since Parish was copying from a plan drawn by a Spaniard. In order to aid identification the modern Portuguese forms of these names are given below. The remains of most of these forts can still be seen in Macao today.

São Paulo do Monte (‘St. Paul of the hill’); Nossa Senhora da Guia (‘Our Lady the Guide’); Santiago da Barra (‘St. James of the Bar’); Nossa Senhora do Bom Parto (‘Our Lady of Good Birth’); Sao Francisco (St. Francis); Fortim de São Pedro, ‘The Bulwark of St. Peter’).

The main fort of Macao, the São Paulo do Monte, was begun by the Jesuits in 1616 and was subsequently taken over and completed by the Macao Government. The walls still stand. For a description of the Dutch attack on Macao in 1622 see Boxer, C. R., Fidalgos in the Far East 1550–1770, 76–83Google Scholar. For a handy account of the various forts see Major Acacio Henriques, Cabreira, Monumentos Nacionais Existentes na Provincia de Macau, Macau, 1956, 23–33Google Scholar.

I wish to record my grateful thanks to Mr. J. M. Braga of Hong Kong for giving me the benefit of his close knowledge of the history of Macao while writing this article.

10. Parish appears to have added up the figures wrongly. The total should be 1080.

11. For some reason it was not marked with a C in Parish's plan. In fact Parish is referring to the Bay of Cacilhas, where the small Dutch force had landed on 24 June 1622 at the beginning of their abortive attack on Macao. The C has been added in brackets to the plan reproduced on page.

12. A barbette can be defined as ‘an earthem terrace inside the parapet of a rampart, serving as a platform for heavy guns’ (Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary), The artillery was able to fire over the top of the parapet.

13. Baron van Menno Coehoom (1641–1714) invented a small mortar used in the siege of Grave (1673); this developed into many types used since then, up to the “trench mortar” of the twentieth century. They were short, thick pieces of ordnance resting on a “bed”, and changes of range were effected by increasing or reducing the charges.

I am most grateful to Mr. T. H. McGuffie, the Honory Editor of the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research for supplying this note on a highly specialised subject and also for helping me with the other footnotes on siege-warfare terms in this article.

11. A semi-circular projection at the shoulder of a bastion intended to cover the guns and defenders on the flank and giving some degree of cover to a gun standing on the natural surface'.

15. Alsó, ‘orillion’. 'A side-work of a battery, or earthwork to protect it from a flanking fire (Chambers's). A sketch will explain this better.

16. A Portuguese term used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to denote a rank equivalent to that of a Colonel-of-Foot.

17. A very doubtful statement in view of subsequent events. In spite of a stoppage of trade during the Anglo-Chinese War of 1839–42 the people of Canton were continually hostile to foreigners, and this was the reason put forward by successive Governors-General of Kwangtung-Kwangsi after the Treaty of Nanking for not allowing the English to enter the city of Canton.

18. The narrow entrance at the mouth of the Pearl river which connects Canton with the sea. The Chinese name was Hu-men, meaning ‘tiger's mouth’. The Portuguese followed the Chinese name and called it Bocca do Tigre. This became corrupted into Bocca Tigris which is the usual Western name for the Hu-men.

19. The English captured Manila in 1762 but subsequently handed it back to Spain when the cost and the difficulties of administering it were realized. However, the idea of holding Manila was revived during the war against revolutionary France and in November, 1796, the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the East India Company sent orders to Sir John Shore, Governor-General of British India, to prepare for an expedition to Manila, and in August, 1797, the expedition was on the point of sailing from Madras under the command of Rear-Admiral Rainier when it was called off. See Parkinson, C. Northcote, War in the Eastern Seas 1793–1815, 112–119.Google Scholar

20. This statement, however, was qualified by a “memorandum” which Parish attached to the end of his report (see below). The process of the silting up of the inner harbour had begun a long time previously. The normal anchorage for large ships at this time was in the bay between the islands of Taipa and Dom João (also called Macarira).

21. The name of an island off Macao forming pan of the Portuguese Colony. It was also spelt Typa or Tipa; the modern spelling is Taipa. In the plan of Macao published in the folio volume of Sir G. L. Staunton's account of the Macartney embassy (see footnote 7) Parish has marked a narrow strip of low-lying land between two parts of the island as ‘broken ground over which the tide sometimes flows’. This channel was filled in early in the present century. The name of the island was traditionally used to denote the anchorage there. (See note 20).

22. Richard Wellesley, Lord Mornington, created Marquis Wellesley in 1799. He was appointed Governor-General of India in 1707 and served in that capacity foum 1798–1805. One of his younger brothers, Lieut-Colonel Arthur Wellesley, bad arrived in India in 1797, and was promoted Major-General in April, 1802.

23. Peter Rainier was appointed Commodore in 1794 and sent out to the East Indies Station. He was promoted Rear-Admiral in 1795 and Vice-Admiral in 1799. He served continuously on the East Indies Station from 1794 until 1804, during most of which period he was Commander-in-Chief of the station. See Parkinson, C. Northcote, op. cit., 65–262Google Scholar; 431, and also the frontispiece which is a reproduction of a portrait of Rainier by Devis.

24. By an agreement with, the Portuguese authorities made in 1799 a small force had been sent to Goa to strengthen the defences against a possible French attack. See Biker, J. F. Judice, Supplemento a Coleccāo dos Tratados, Convencōes Contratos e Actos Publicos celebrados entre Portugal e as mais Potencias desde 1640, coordenados pelò Visconde de Borges de Castro e continuados par… Tomo XV, Lisboa, 1878, 141 and 213Google Scholar. Also de Almada, José, A Aliança Inglesas: Subsidios para o seu estudo. Compilados e anotados. Lisboa, 1947, Vol. II pp. 7–14.Google Scholar

25. B.M. Add. MS. 13703, folios 23–8.

26. The supercargoes of the East India Company trading at Canton were governed since 1779 by a Select Committee, which usually consisted of three or four senior members, one of whom acted as President. At this time the President was James Andrew John Laurence Charles Drummond, second son of the Hon. William Drummond, who was the second son of the fourth Viscount Strathallan. Born on 24 March, 1767, James Drummond went out to Canton in the East India Company's service at an early age. When Lord Macartney stayed at Macao from January until March, 1794, on his way back to England, he stayed in the house rented at Macao by James Drummond, who lived there during the off season, which was approximately April until October, (see J. L. Cranmer-Byng, op. cit. 219). Drummond became President of the Select Committee in January 1802, a position which he held, with only short breaks, until he left Canton permanently in January, 1807. He then settled down in Scotland and served as M.P. for Perthshire from 1812 until 1824. He succeeded to the representation of his family in 1817, and to the peerage as Viscount Strathallan in 1824, when the act of attainder against his family was reversed by Act of Parliament and his family's honours were restored. He was subsequently a Representative Peer of Scotland for twenty-five years. He died on 19 June, 1851.

27. Morse, H. B., The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834, II, 382Google Scholar. Morse prints the full text of this letter between page 381–3. The original is in the British Museum, Add. MS. 13707, folios 35–8.

28. Printed in Morse, , op. cit., II, 383–6Google Scholar.

These events occurred in the middle of the trading season, and the supercargoes of the East India Company were living at the British Factory, just outside the walls of Canton, and not at their residences at Macao. When the news of the arrival of the force from India reached the Select Committee, it replied that its President would come down to Macao to consult. Morse, , op. cit., 387.Google Scholar

29. The Governor-General of the two Kwangs at this time was Chi-ch'ing a Manchu of the plain white banner and a member of the Gioro clan. He was appointed Governor-General in the first year of Chia-ch'ing (1796–7) and held this post until his death at Canton on 14 December, 1802. His biography can be found in Ch'ing-shih kao, chúan 349 p. 2bGoogle Scholar, and in Kuo-ch'ao ch'i-hsien lei-cheng, chuan 35, p. 27.Google Scholar

30. Printed in Morse, , op. cit., II, 386–7.Google Scholar

31. A small island in the estuary of the Pearl River between Macao and the part of Kwangtung which is now the Castle Peak peninsula of the Colony of Hong Kong. Lin tin was used as an anchorage for opium depôt-ships by British and other opium smugglers from about 1821 onwards.

32. Printed in Morse, , op. cit., II, 380.Google Scholar

33. José Manuel Pinto, Governor of Macao from 1798 until 1797, and again from 1800 until 1803. In January, 1794, he received Lord Macartney at Macao who described him as' … a well-bred reasonable man of about forty years old, and has the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Portuguese service'. Cranmer-Byng, J. L.., op. cit., 219.Google Scholar

34. See Villas, Ribeiro, Historia Colonial, II, 308Google Scholar. The Treaty of Amiens was finally concluded in March 1802. War broke out again between France and England in May 1803.

35. A British naval and military force under the command of Rear-Admiral William O'Brien Drury arrived off Macao on 11 September, 1808. The disembarkation of troops began on 15 September. Re-embarkation was carried out between 15–24 December, 1808. For a short account of this episode from the British records see Parkinson, C. Northcote, op. cit. 317–34Google Scholar. For the Portuguese point of view see Memoria dos Feitos Macaenses Contra os Pirates da China: e da Entrada Violenta dos Inglezes na Cidade de Macao, by Andrade, Jose Ignacio, 2nd ed.Lisbon, 1835, 95–143.Google Scholar