page_title: Luso-Asians
section_title: Bayingyi people
hierarchical_section_title: Luso-Asians / Myanmar (Luso-Burmese) / Bayingyi people
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: portugais sur un éléphant. Art namban
context_page_description: Luso-Asians are people whose ethnicity is partially or wholly Portuguese and ancestrally are based in or hail primarily from Portugal and Asia. They historically came under the cultural and multi-ethnic sway of the Portuguese Empire and retain aspects of the Portuguese language, Roman Catholic faith, and cultural practices, including internal and external architecture, art, and cuisine that reflect this contact. The term Luso comes from the Roman province Lusitania, roughly corresponding to modern Portugal.
  Luso-Asian Art is also known as Indo-Portuguese Art, Luso-Ceylonese Art, Luso-Siamese Art, Luso-Malay, Sino-Portuguese Art, or Nipo-Portuguese Art. Examples of this art, especially of furniture and religious art are found throughout Europe and in the islands of Macaronesia.
  Luso-Asians traded and influenced each other within Asia as well as with Portugal and other parts of Catholic Europe, especially Spain and Italy. This exchange produced distinctive elements in domestic, civic and religious Luso-Asian architecture, as well as Luso-Asian cuisine.
context_section_description: Portuguese people have a long history in Myanmar, with many Bayingyi people, from Upper Myanmar, particularly the Sagaing Region, claiming partial or entire Portuguese Origin. These Portuguese origins date back to the 16th and 17th century Burmese artillery and musketeer corps, made up exclusively of foreign (Portuguese and Muslim) mercenaries, such as Filipe de Brito e Nicote. Portuguese mercenaries did not return to Portugal, and settled in their own hereditary villages in Upper Burma where they practiced their own religion and followed their own customs. It is reasonable that there are at least 1,000 Bayingyi in Myanmar to this day, with an 1830 Census purporting around 3,000 Bayingyis , and it is entirely possible many thousands more have some Portuguese ancestry. Centuries of inter-marriage have left the Bayingyi more or less assimilated into the Bamar ethnic group of Myanmar, but they have still kept their sense of Portuguese identity and Roman Catholic Religion.
  Filipe de Brito e Nicote, the Portuguese adventurer, mercenary, and former Governor of Syriam, is an example of a famous Bayingyi person.
caption: Filipe de Brito, Portuguese mercenary and governor of Syriam, Burma, circa 1600.
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