News / Events

MACAU OPENS ITS RENOVATED ARCHIVES

Isaú Santos*

FROM distant times when the Portuguese began to sail the South China Seas, until they actually settled in Macau, up to our own times, many events have come and gone. Some of them are known to us, some of them are completely unknown.

What would we give to know, for example, the kind of reception Jorge Álvares was given by the Chinese when he arrived at Taman Island, or the trials and tribulations suffered by Tomé Pires during his long stay in the Court at Peking? Or, precisely when it was that the Portuguese came to live in Macau and how they structured their society? Yet another compelling question is what was the legal basis of the Portuguese settlement in Macau?

We have not to date been able to find a satisfactory answer to any of these questions. The reason lies in the lack of documents concerning these events, a constant problem in Macau's history. Many irreplaceable items have been lost, all to the greater loss of the history of the territory. Man's ignorance and greed, disasters wreaked by weather and fires have been the main culprits.

The Macau Historical Archives were established in 1979 in an attempt to recuperate this situation and save what remained in terms of documents. The Archives were taken under the umbrella of the Cultural Institute of Macau in 1986 and the winds of change brought a technical renovation of the building in which they were housed. Now the Archives are deposited in a building which has been fitted out with the most up-to-date technology for repairing, storing and using the material they hold. In fact, it should be recognised that the facilities are not only amongst the best in this region, but in the world. Here the Archives will remain, in order to gather together documents relating to the history of Macau, Portugal and China and of the many people whose paths crossed on this plot of land.

THE Historical Archives will from now on collect and exchange bibliographic and documental material in Chinese and European languages from archives in Portugal, Rome, the British Museum in London, libraries in Spain, archives in India, Goa, Brazil and China as well as from a host of other institutions across the world. Most of it has been put onto microfilm and at the moment there are already around six hundred rolls of microfilm in the Archives.

The Macau Historical Archives also holds original documents from institutions within the territory, including Public Administration (1734-1980), the Education Department (1871-1929), the Finance Department (1915-1982), the Governor's Office (1919-1948), the Leal Senado (1672-1975), the Marine Department (1849-1965), and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia (1592-1931).

At present, the public departments still hold a tremendous amount of material which is in varying stages of decay, due to the precarious nature of the conditions in which it is being stored. It is thus imperative that the measures created to preserve these documents be put into action immediately in order to avoid the kind of vacuum which we have seen in the past. One of the crowning features of the renovated Archives is a data base which has been developed to aid research into the Portuguese presence in India and the Pacific region. Already the inventories and indices from the archives of the Santa Casa de Misericórdia for the period 1592 to 1931 have been entered into the computer, as well as those for the Leal Senado covering the period 1672 to 1975. These now amount to over thirteen hundred archival units to which there is speedy and easy access.

More than eight thousand books held in the reading room library of the Archives are necessary works for studying the history of the Portuguese in this part of the world and these too are also being computerlisted. The boom in information technology has brought about profound changes in the concept of an archive. No longer are printed documents the only kind of material they deal with. They are also responsible for microfilms, photographs, slides, optical discs and so on.

A description of the contents of the six hundred or so microfilms which constitute the film library in the Archives has also been put on computer. The description of each microfilm includes the dates covered by the contents, the number of documents and photograms, their size, where they came from and the date on which they entered the Archives.

In addition to the thousands of photographs held by the Historical Archives, there is an important collection of around fifty thousand slides of Macau. The collection was put together by the Special Projects Department of the Cultural Institute of Macau and has already been computer-listed. These slides will serve as an image bank cum data base after having been technically processed in accordance with international library norms. Access to such a wide range of documents and materials requires, on the part of the Archives, suitable provision for the user and this has been done by means of systematic recourse to computerisation.

SHOULD such a lot of attention be paid to archives? Should so much money be spent on them? Are they really an essential part of society? My answer to all these questions is 'yes'.

The State must consult archives in order to find a basis for the decisions it must take, and in order to remind itself of its commitments both national and international. If these documents have not been classified and stored, it is very difficult to gain access to them. If they have been lost or destroyed by mistake this will lead to countless decisions being made without the necessary grounding. On the other hand, if the documents have been housed in the central archives and correctly conserved, classified, catalogued and indexed then they can be found easily and so can contribute to balanced decision-making.

Economic and social development can be defined as a series of efforts undertaken by the State with a view to increasing the material and social infrastructures in order to improve living conditions of the population. Archives house data about agriculture, industry, commerce as well as information about measures adopted in the past and how these measures were decided on as well as whether they succeeded or failed.

Archives can also give proof of rights, privileges and duties. Citizens must obtain certificates proving various events in their lives such as birth, marriage, divorce, nationality, military service or civil service. This certificate can serve as proof of the rights to which they or their beneficiaries are entitled or compensation from the State or private individuals. It is also important that the State have proof of these events in order to oblige its citizens to comply with their duties.

Archives serve as witnesses to the activities of the State and the public and as such they are of tremendous interest for historical research into the various areas of social activity. In fact, we could say that archives are the collective memory of the State and its institutions. In this sense they are instruments of administrative efficiency and economy, the repository of the State's successes and failures with the potential for allowing mistakes to be corrected and possibly avoided in the future. The International Law Committee of the United Nations declared in April 1976 that it would be possible to have a state without an army, but never without archives, currency and its own finances.

The people whose history is stored in the Archives of Macau must look to this institution for a reponse to their preoccupations, a response which can calm their anxieties. When they do so, they will also discover that the features which bring them together are stronger than those which separate them. This should lead them to study their past in greater detail in order to lead to a greater understanding of the present because it is only when a nation understands itself that it can respect itself.

* Graduate in Political and Social Sciences with postgraduate diplomas in Philosophy, Theology, and Archives. Director of the Overseas Historical Archives (Lisbon), presently employed as Director of the Macau Historical Archives.

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