The Macao Special Administrative Region comprises the small mainland peninsula of Macao and the two islands of Taipa and Coloane.  The region reverted to full Chinese adminstration on 20 December 1999, after almost 450 years as a Portuguese dependency.

The Portiguese settled in a number of temporary trading stations along the coast in the 1540s and early 1550s.  In 1556-57, the Portuguese were allowed by the local mandarin to settle permanently on the Macao peninsula. Within a decade a small but very propsperous city had developed on wealth derived almost entirely from the entrepot trade with Japan.

Macao’s prosperity fell into decline with the expulsion of Portuguese missionaries and traders from Japan. For over a century Macao was dependent on coastal trade supplying Dutch merchants, who still had access to the Japan trade.

With the development of the opium trade Macao’s fortunes took an upturn, and the colony enjoyed a period of steady prosperity.  Macao was spared the convulsions that wracked much of China in the early decades of the 20th centrury. Warlords left it alone, principally because it was too small and insignificant to be of any use to an attacker.

The Japanese did not occupy Macao during the Pacific War, generally but not entirely respecting Portuguese neutrality. Many refugees of various nationalities came from Hong Kong to Macao and stayed throughouit the war.

After the war, Macao reverted to its pre-war status as a sleepy backwater port, and remained calm until 1966.  In early December of that year Red Guard-inspired riots occurred, causing much damage in the city and prompting a Portuguese offer of withdrawal from Macao.

The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration was signed in 1987, providing for Macao’s return to Chinese administration in 1999. There followed a property boom, in the process of which massive land reclamations were undertaken, completely changing the appearance of Macao. For all the apparent modernity, however, there is still a lot of old Macao to be found.

Macao Harbour c.1900