Duarte Fernandes Reaches Siam
Duarte Fernandes reached Ayutthaya in 1511 as the first European envoy to the kingdom of Siam, sent by Afonso de Albuquerque within weeks of the Portuguese capture of Malacca. The embassy was diplomatic housekeeping of an urgent kind. Malacca had been a tributary of Siam and its conquest was an act against Siamese interests, and Albuquerque needed to establish that the Portuguese were traders rather than conquerors of the mainland — and to secure rice, which Siam exported and which Malacca could not feed itself without. Fernandes was chosen because he knew Malay. He had been a sailor captured and enslaved in Malacca years before and had lived there long enough to speak the language, which made him more useful than any nobleman available. He travelled with Malay intermediaries and was received by King Ramathibodi II at Ayutthaya, then one of the largest cities in the world. The mission succeeded. It returned with a Siamese envoy, gifts and a letter, and produced a treaty in 1516 — the first between Siam and a European power — granting the Portuguese freedom to trade and reside at Ayutthaya, Tenasserim, Mergui and Pattani, in exchange for firearms and military instruction. Portuguese mercenaries served in the Siamese army for over a century afterwards, and Portuguese gunners are credited with changing Siamese siege warfare. A Portuguese quarter existed at Ayutthaya until the Burmese destroyed the city in 1767. Siam is the one Southeast Asian state that was never colonised. Its rulers played the European powers against each other for four centuries, a policy that began with this embassy.
- Year: 1511 CE
- Category: Exploration
