João Maria Ferreira do Amaral (Lisbon, Alcântara, 4 March 1803 - Macau, 22 August 1849) was a Portuguese military and politician.
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He was the first son of Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral, born in Lisbon, Alcântara, on 3 May 1773, whose male line was de Macedo, a Fidalgo of the Royal Household and a Sergeant of the Portuguese Army and the Portuguese Legion during the Napoleonic Wars who died frozen at the French Invasion of Russia, where he might have been promoted to Alférez, in the Winter of 1812, and wife, married in Lisbon, Alcântara, on 4 February 1801, Ana Isabel Cirila de Mendonça, and older brother of Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral, born in Lisbon, Alcântara, on 15 October 1804, and Francisca Ferreira do Amaral, born in Lisbon, Alcântara, on 10 May 1805, both without further notice.
A distinguished and valliant Officer of the Portuguese Royal Fleet, he lived a military career full of peripetias and gallantries. In 1821 he was a Midshipman and started his brilliant military career at the Fleet which, in Brazil, defended the rights of Portugal. In that campaign he lost his right arm in battle. After it was amputated, while he was smoking a cigar, he threw his limb to the air, threw it and shout Viva Portugal! (Long live Portugal!).
By 1839 he was a Captain of Sea and War, Knight Fidalgo of the Royal Household, etc.
After serving as a Deputy for Angola, he was appointed the 79th Governor of Macau on 21 April 1846. During his three years as Governor, he implemented a range of policies to entrench Portugal's colonial authority over Macau. Within a month of taking office, he demanded that all Chinese residents in Macau pay ground rent, poll tax and property tax; the Qing authorities in Macau immediately protested against his action and attempted to negotiate. However, beginning in 1849, he expelled all Qing officials from Macau, destroyed the Qing Customs and stopped paying ground rent to the Qing government.
His actions enraged the Chinese residents further, and he was assassinated on 22 August 1849 by seven Chinese men, who knocked him off his horse and cut his head. This was the trigger for the Baishaling Incident.
In Lisbon, Santa Catarina, on 20 October 1849, almost two months after the incident in which he was killed and without knowing those news, in order to legitimize their son Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral and their daughter Joana Teresa de Albuquerque, Maria Helena de Albuquerque, 1st Baroness of Oliveira Lima (Funchal, São Pedro, 1817 - Lisbon, 6 June 1909), then a widow, married the deceased by proxy, taking advantage of the fact that, early in that year, her first husband had also died. Her first husband, whom she had married in 1836, António Teixeira Dória, ...th Lord of the Majorat of ..., son of Francisco Teixeira Dória and wife (m. Funchal, Sé, 1798) Joana Margarida da Câmara, was a First Mate in a Navy corvette whose Commander was João Maria Ferreira do Amaral. According to their descendant Augusto Martins Ferreira do Amaral, 3rd Baron of Oliveira Lima, Maria Helena cheated her first husband with her later second husband, and believes that a first son of her, during her first marriage, João Eduardo Teixeira Dória, an Artillery Officer, born in Lisbon, São Paulo, on 13 October 1841, who died unmarried and without issue, was already João Maria Ferreira do Amaral's son, for he had similar features. She separated from the First Mate, went on to live in a Nunnery Convent, and got again pregnant of the ship's Commander, although this baby was already baptized as son of João Maria Ferreira do Amaral and an unknown mother, in order not to be registered under the name of her first husband.