This book brings together works by specialists from various areas of the social sciences to reflect on the presence of China in Portugal and in Portuguese-speaking territories. From the first Chinese coolies that migrated to the former Portuguese colonies more than 100 years ago, to the current investments along the Belt and Road Initiative, we take the pulse of this historic, social, political and economic presence and flows, that continues to renew and reinvent itself in the face of the challenges of contemporaneity.

This multi-disciplinary volume is the first collective effort to explore Istanbul, capital of the vast polyglot, multiethnic, and multireligious Ottoman empire and home to one of the world's largest and most diverse urban populations, as an early modern metropolis. It assembles topics seldom treated together and embraces novel subjects and fresh approaches to older debates. Contributors crisscross the socioeconomic, political, cultural, environmental, and spatial, to examine the myriad human and non-human actors, local and global, that shaped the city into one of the key sites of early modern urbanity. Contributors are: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano , Zeynep Altok, Walter G. Andrews, Betul Basaran, Cem Behar, Maurits H. van den Boogert, John J. Curry, Linda T. Darling, Suraiya Faroqhi, Emine Fetvaci, Shirine Hamadeh, Cemal Kafadar, Cigdem Kafescioglu, Deniz Karakas, Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik, B. Harun Kucuk, Selim S. Kuru, Karen A. Leal, Gulru Necipoglu, Christoph K. Neumann, Asli Niyazioglu, Amanda Phillips, Marinos Sariyannis, Aleksandar Shopov, Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Nukhet Varlik, N. Zeynep Yelce, Gulay Yilmaz, and Zeynep Yurekli.