Jorge Álvares
Jorge Álvares was the first European to reach China by sea. He was a Portuguese trader and captain working out of Malacca, which Afonso de Albuquerque had taken in 1511, and which gave the Portuguese a base at the point where the Indian Ocean and South China Sea trades met. He was sent north in 1513 in a junk, following the route Chinese and Malay merchants used, and reached an island in the Pearl River estuary that the Portuguese called Tamão, near present-day Hong Kong or Macau. He was not permitted to land on the mainland or to travel to Guangzhou. He traded from the island, set up a stone marker, or padrão, carved with the Portuguese arms, and returned with a cargo and with the information that mattered more. His reports established that the trade was worth pursuing and that the Chinese authorities regulated foreign contact strictly through licensed intermediaries rather than by open ports. The formal embassy that followed under Tomé Pires in 1517 went badly. Portuguese behaviour at Tamão — building a fort, buying children who had probably been kidnapped, and firing salutes that were taken as insolence — combined with complaints from the deposed sultan of Malacca, who was a Chinese tributary. The embassy was detained and most of its members died in prison. The Portuguese were expelled and traded illicitly along the coast for decades before being permitted a settlement at Macau in 1557. Álvares died at Tamão in 1521 and was buried beside his own padrão. Macau remained Portuguese until 1999.
- Lived: 1490 CE – 1521 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: explorer, merchant, captain
