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PRECONVENTIONAL PERIOD
happens in more advanced communities." Long, however, before the influence of this community could have begun to soften Chinese impressions of the foreigner, those impressions had been indelibly fixed by such striking incidents as Simon de Andrade's brutalities and piracies, Mendez Pinto's sacrilegious robberies, the barbarous rapes of the Ningpo women, the excesses committed by the Tsuan-chou settlers, and other events to be now briefly related.
The Spaniards stand next to the Portuguese in the record of collective European intercourse with China. They conquered the Philippines in 1543 and formally annexed the whole group a few years later. Considerable settlements of Chinese traders were found in the islands, junks having long been in the habit of proceeding thither from Foochou, Tsuan-chou, and Amoy. But although the possession of the Philippines should have suggested commerce with China, which is within easy reach of those islands at all seasons, the Spaniards showed no enterprise in that direction. They left the initiative to missionaries, two of whom,—Augustine friars,—taking advantage of the auspices of a Chinese naval officer who in 1575 reached Manila in pursuit of a notorious pirate, accompanied him on his return to the province of Kwang-tung. Courteously received by the Chinese local authorities, they were nevertheless ultimately obliged to return to Manila re infecta, the ill-repute of the Portuguese settlers having rendered the Chinese
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