The short visit of Admiral Van Neck to Macao in 1601 is the focus of this paper. The brutal murder of 17 of his crewmembers at the hands of the Portuguese became the casus belli for Van Heemskerck’s seizure of the Portuguese Carraque “Santa Catarina” in 1603. The vehement Portuguese reaction to Van Neck’s arrival has been described as an isolated incident or an outrageous act committed on the spur of the moment by some hot-headed officials in Macao. A careful scrutiny of Chinese sources in combination with De Groot’s evidence in Dejure Praedae Commen-tarius（A Commentary on the Right of Booty），contemporary letters by Dutch sailors，logbooks，and Portuguese correspondence seized by Van Heemskerck will help us gain a better understanding of this incident. Moreover it will enable us to distance ourselves from the standpoint of the lawyer，or the morally oriented historian for that matter，and to observe the incident not merely as a clash between Europeans but also as a paradigm of contemporary Chinese aspirations for trade with the European nations at the beginning of the seventeenth century.