A Study of Images of Macau’s Sovereignty: The Explosion of the Frigate ‘Dona Maria II’ off Taipa Island, Macau

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Macau’s sovereignty; History of export painting; History of image; international relations

Abstract

Since the nineteenth century, the question of Macau’s sovereignty has constituted a pivotal point of contention between China and Portugal. Both parties have left a substantial corpus of documentary historical records chronicling the entirety of the process in question. However, the image historical records have received comparatively limited attention. This article concentrates on the export painting, entitled ‘The explosion of the frigate “Dona Maria II” off Taipa Island, Macau’, which forms part of the collection of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. On the basis of careful research on the picture itself and the incident, the theory of using images to prove history and other historical materials are used to reconstruct the explosion of the frigate ‘Dona Maria II’. The findings of the research demonstrate that at a pivotal moment in the 19th-century struggle for sovereignty over Macau between Portugal and the Qing government, the image of the explosion of the frigate Dona Maria II reflects a shift in Portugal’s diplomatic strategy towards China and its aspiration for sovereignty over Macau. Furthermore, the representation of a Western-style ship in the painting provides additional evidence regarding the template used in Guangdong export paintings.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zixin Lin
AU  - Zhengyang Pei
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/22
TI  - A Study of Images of Macau’s Sovereignty: The Explosion of the Frigate ‘Dona Maria II’ off Taipa Island, Macau
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 22
EP  - 35
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_4
ID  - Lin2025
ER  -