Macao and East Asia Military Architecture: Context, Networks and Influences
For several centuries, Chinese fortifications influenced military constructions in Asia. During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese and Spaniards arrived in Southeast Asia. Bringing military technology, like cannons and firearms, they influenced the warfare and historical-political outcomes in Chi...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
2022
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40069/4125 |
| Summary: | For several centuries, Chinese fortifications influenced military constructions in Asia. During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese and Spaniards arrived in Southeast Asia. Bringing military technology, like cannons and firearms, they influenced the warfare and historical-political outcomes in China, Japan and Korea. Macao served as a Portuguese base, and a platform for educated Jesuits such as Luís Fróis, who introduced Western technological and scientific concepts to the elites of Japan. The warlord Oda Nobunaga, a daimyo feudal lord from a small province in central Japan, rapidly achieved military supremacy by successfully using Western technology and tactics in the art of war in his pursuit of the unification of Japan. With the construction of Azuchi castle-palace, he also revolutionised the construction of castles in Japan, adopting many elements from European castles, with innovations that revoked the old Japanese models. There is a strong possibility that these innovations were possible through Portuguese and Jesuit influence. Portuguese forces from Macao also helped the last remains of the Ming dynasty to fight the invading Qing forces. Through several centuries, Macao played an important role in the struggle against pirates in the region. The consolidation of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1615) in Japan and the Qing dynasty (1644) in China initiated a long period of peace. Military architecture evolution practically stagnated during this period. Today, the surviving fortresses have been adapted or restored as important educational assets for cultural tourism, particularly in Japan. Several seventeenth-century Japanese castles were rebuilt in the twentieth century. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |