By Stuart Braga
Two centuries ago, Macau was in trouble. After the collapse of the hugely profitable trade with Japan in1640, hard times set in, but a century later, things began to improve as trade with China, chiefly in tea,silk and porcelain, developed. In Europe, wealthy people were cultivating a taste for all of these. However, after 1760, British traders began to move in and soon controlled most of the trade with China. They were far better organised, had better ships, and were skilled and ruthless entrepreneurs. A new commodity began to grow in importance: opium, which came to dominate commerce, and was a means to rapid wealth for those involved in it. For the Macanese, it was a time of steep decline when many old Macanese families lost most of their wealth and eminence. A few families stood out from this scene of economic ruin. Predominant among them was the Pereira family, who moved with ease and assurance in both worlds. They remained pre-eminent in Macanese society, and at the same time were one of only two families who were socially acceptable in the class-conscious and snobbish British elite who by the 1830s dominated Macau’s economy. It was a unique achievement; no other Portuguese family was able to gain a similar status in the deeply racist society of Hong Kong until well after World War II, nearly 150 years later. Who were the Pereiras, and how did they do it?
Why Manuel Pereira came to Macau in the mid-eighteenth century is unknown, but he was a wealthy man who brought considerable capital with him, and at once became one of its leading citizens. He held three decorations from the King of Portugal: Comendador da Ordem de Cristo (Commander of the Order of Christ), Comendador da Ordem de Na Sra da Conceição da Vila Viçosa (Commander of the Order of Our Lady of Conception of Vila Viçosa) and Fidalgo Cavaleiro da Casa Real (Noble Knight of the Royal Household. He built the best house in Macau, located on an eminence above the city, with an extensive garden that is now a public park, the Camoens Garden. The house itself, the sole survivor of the grand mansions of the eighteenth century, is now the Macau headquarters of the Fundacão Oriente. However, Manuel and his son, also Manuel, did not live there for any length of time. It was soon rented to the English East India Company as the residence of the President of the Select Committee, the title given to the General Manager of its operations in China. This decision may have been because Manuel had over-reached himself financially, but is more likely to have been a means of establishing good relations with the British and so to maintain himself at the head of Macau’s social hierarchy, at the apex of which was a small group of wealthy families.
Foremost among them were the Pereira and Paiva families, both of whom were socially acceptable at English and American parties and spoke good English. The Pereiras were possibly the most anglophile people in a community in which many people disliked the British after their unsuccessful attempts to
occupy Macau in 1802 and 1808. Already wealthy when they came to Macau, both families maintained their wealth and prominence through the growing opium trade. The best opium, Patna and Benares, came from Bengal and the British merchants shipped it to the Far East through Calcutta. The Portuguese merchants bought their opium at Goa. Grown in the central Indian district of Malwa, it was not as well regarded as Patna and Benares opium. At best, the Portuguese merchants had only 10% of the Chinese market, but it was enough to make them far richer and more influential than they had been before the opium trade boomed in the 1820s and 1830s.
In the 1820s, Manuel’s grandson António went out of his way to help the British to resolve what had
become a serious problem for them. This was where to bury their dead. Life was unpredictable in the tropics, and disease was little understood and usually fatal. The ecclesiastical authorities were determined not to allow the burial of heretics within the walls of the City of the Holy Name of God. That meant the British had to bury their dead outside the city wall, where the corpse was often immediately dug up by Chinese villagers, offended at the foreigners’ disregard of the principles of feng shui. As the numbers of traders grew, so did the number of dead. In 1821 the East India Company with great difficulty secured permission to purchase a small plot of land for a Protestant cemetery, immediately adjacent to the Casa Garden, the former Pereira residence. It was stipulated that the cemetery must have high walls and there must be no bell to offend the ears of the Catholic faithful. No place of worship was to be erected.
Soon afterwards, António Pereira was instrumental in securing for the Company a small plot of land adjacent to the cemetery to build a small chapel as a gathering place for those attending burials. The chapel was not described as a place of worship, which would have been anathema to the Catholic authorities, but ‘a place of reception for the funerals of deceased foreigners, on account of its contiguity to their place of interment’. Now known as the Morrison Chapel, after the first Protestant missionary in China, it remains to this day. António Pereira’s advocacy naturally earned him the gratitude of the British and American merchants, all of whom were Protestants.
This family would have been notable in any society; the fact that they owned numerous African slaves did not create adverse comment from an American visitor, Harriett Low, who wrote admiringly in November 1829 of António’s wife, Aurélia: ‘Mrs Pereira called to see us today. She was most splendidly dressed in a rich crimson velvet pelisse neatly trimmed, with a handsome white hat. She is a very pleasant woman.’ Next month Harriett called on Mrs Pereira. She described her mansion, presumably another one built after she left the Casa Garden. It was ‘a perfect palace. She has 18 Caffres [black Africans – not necessarily Kaffirs] live with her and is obliged to keep 12 sepoys [Indian servants] to take care of them beside China servants, Bengalies and everything else. She has an immense household.’ The Pereiras were what the British elite called ‘respectable’. To Harriett, not immune from snobbery, like most of the expatriates in Macau, to be ‘respectable’ was to be wealthy. To be wealthy, you had to deal in opium, but polite society never spoke about it.
Their wealth attracted the expatriate community to the Pereiras and to another leading family, the Paivas. Harriett noted two weddings of members of the Paiva family – ‘one of the most respectable families here’. She did not attend the wedding, but remarked at the size of Ana Rita Paiva’s dowry, said to be $80,000. The second Paiva wedding was the subject of small-town gossip about the matchmaking ambitions of the mother of the bride, Inácia Vicência Paiva. Her brother, Francisco José Paiva would later become the first Portuguese consul in Hong Kong. The Pereiras, like the English gentry in India and later Hong Kong, sent their sons to England for their education. One, Eduardo, returned to become as prominent in Hong Kong as his parents had been in Macau.
Eduardo, now Edward, was certainly the most completely anglicised of all the Macanese who came to Hong Kong in its early years. English-educated and wealthy, Pereira was invited to become a partner of Dent & Co., one of the largest mercantile operations in the colony. He was the only member of the Portuguese community to be accepted as an equal into British society in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, China Branch in 1848. This was a cultural organisation set up under vice-regal patronage most of its members belonged to the Establishment. He was one of the ninety-nine members of the Hong Kong Volunteers when the Corps was established in 1854.
Later in the 1850s, Edward moved permanently to England where he had been educated, perhaps the first Portuguese from Hong Kong to do so. Having acquired conspicuous wealth, all of the firm’s partners retired to Britain; so too did Edward Pereira, living in a mansion on Grosvenor Square, London, one of the finest addresses in the British Empire. He at once moved into genteel society and in 1862 he married into the aristocracy. His wife was the Hon. Margaret Anne Stonor, 8th daughter of Thomas Stonor, 3rd Baron Camoys of Stonor Park, Oxfordshire. They had three sons; all were educated at The Oratory School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, established by Cardinal Newman in 1859 as an elite boarding school for the sons of the Catholic gentry. All three had significant careers.
Two joined the British Army and became generals. The eldest was Brigadier-General George Pereira, who in 1905, following a notable military career, returned to the Far East as Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Peking and later became an intrepid explorer in western China and Tibet. The youngest was Major-General Sir Cecil Pereira, a distinguished commander in the Boer War and the First World War. The middle son, Edward Thomas Pereira (known as ‘E.P.’) became Headmaster of The Oratory School and its benefactor, using his mind and money for the benefit of others. By that time, slavery was a thing of the past and opium was on the way out.
None of the Pereira brothers ever went back to Macau, where their father had been born. Instead, they became distinguished servants of the British Empire, but also remained devout and life-long Catholics. One of them, affectionately called ‘Hoppy’ Pereira.