Tomé Pires (c. 1468 — c. 1524/1540) was a Portuguese

apothecary ''Apothecary'' () is an Early Modern English, archaic English term for a medicine, medical professional who formulates and dispenses ''materia medica'' (medicine) to physicians, surgeons and patients. The modern terms ''pharmacist'' and, in Brit ...

, colonial administrator, and diplomat. In 1510 he was commissioned by the Portuguese court to serve as a " factor of drugs" in India, arriving at Cannanore in 1511. In 1512 he was sent to the port city of

Malacca Malacca (), officially the Historic State of Malacca (), is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state in Malaysia located in the Peninsular Malaysia#Other features, southern region of the Malay Peninsula, facing the Strait of Malacca ...

, recently captured by the Portuguese. There he served as the chief accountant for the royal factory. Upon his return to India in 1515, Pires was sent to China as ambassador from the King of Portugal to the Ming Court. His mission failed when the Chinese court refused to recognize him because of the increasingly hostile activities of Portuguese traders in the region. Pires never left China; he was either executed by the Chinese in 1524 or possibly banished for life to a remote Chinese province. During his stay in Malacca, Pires wrote the ''Suma Oriental'', a landmark description of the geography, ethnography and commerce of the Asian coastline stretching from the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

to Japan. The manuscript is an important record of the region at the start of European colonization in the early sixteenth century.

Biography

Very little is known about the life and family of Pires prior to his arrival in India. He was born around 1468, possibly in the Portuguese town of

Leiria Leiria () is a city and municipality in the Central Region, Portugal, Central Region of Portugal. It is the 2nd largest city in that same region, after Coimbra, with a municipality population of 128,640 (as of 2021) in an area of . It is the seat o ...

but evidence of his birthplace is tenuous. He had at least one brother, João Fernandes, and a sister, Isabel Fernandes. His father was apothecary to King João II of Portugal and Pires himself was apothecary to Prince Afonso, the heir apparent until his untimely death in 1491. He went to India in 1511, invested as "factor of drugs", the Eastern commodities that were an important element of what is generally called "the

spice trade The spice trade involved historical civilizations in Asia, Northeast Africa and Europe. Spices, such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric, were known and used in antiquity and traded in t ...

". In Malacca and

Cochin Kochi ( , ), formerly known as Cochin ( ), is a major port city along the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of Kerala. The city is also commonly referred to as Ernaku ...

he avidly collected and documented information on the Malay-

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

n area, and personally visited

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

Sumatra Sumatra () is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the list of islands by area, sixth-largest island in the world at 482,286.55 km2 (182,812 mi. ...

and Maluku.

''Suma Oriental''

From his Malay-Indonesia travels, he wrote a book on Asian trade, the ''Suma Oriental que trata do Mar Roxo até aos Chins'' (An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China). He wrote the book in Malacca and India between 1512 and 1515, completing it before the death of

Afonso de Albuquerque Afonso de Albuquerque, 1st Duke of Goa ( – 16 December 1515), was a Portuguese general, admiral, statesman and ''conquistador''. He served as viceroy of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, during which he expanded Portuguese influence across ...

in December 1515. It was the first comprehensive and reliable account of Asia to the east of India, a region that was almost unknown to Europe at the time. Among its many accomplishments, it contained the first European descriptions of the

Malay Archipelago The Malay Archipelago is the archipelago between Mainland Southeast Asia and Australia, and is also called Insulindia or the Indo-Australian Archipelago. The name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based ...

and the

Spice Islands In the culinary arts, a spice is any seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance in a form primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for ...

. The historical account of Malacca is the earliest known and contains much information not found anywhere else. Pires was also the first to use the name Japan, spelling it as ''Jampon''. The details and accuracy of his descriptions of Sumatra and Java are "remarkable" and were not surpassed for a "couple centuries". It remains one of the most important resources for the study of

Islam in Indonesia Islam is the largest religion in Indonesia, with 87.06% of the Indonesian population identifying themselves as Muslims, based on Civil registration, civil registry data in 2023. In terms of denomination, the overwhelming majority are Sunni ...

. The ''Suma Oriental'' is a compilation of a wide variety of information: historical, geographical, ethnographic, botanical, economic, commercial, etc., including coins, weights and measures. Pires was careful to investigate the accuracy of the information collected from merchants, sailors and others with whom he had contact. It shows him to be a discriminating observer, in spite of his tangled prose. "His style is far from clear," his modern editor has noted, "and no doubt it often becomes more confused, owing to the transcriber's mistakes."The book, couched as a report to Manuel of Portugal, and perhaps fulfilling a commission undertaken before he left

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, is regarded as one of the most conscientious first-hand resources for the study of the geography and trade of the Indies at that time. Although it cannot be regarded as completely free of inaccuracies in its detail, it is remarkably consistent with evidence of the time and makes no fundamentally erroneous statements about the area. Its contemporary rival as a source was only the better-known book by Duarte Barbosa. The ''Suma Oriental'' was unpublished and presumed lost until 1944 when a manuscript copy was discovered in a Paris archive. Four letters written by Pires survive, and there are a scattering of references to him by contemporaries, including a letter from Albuquerque to the King, 30 November 1513.

1516 embassy to China

In 1516, Tomé Pires went to Canton (Guangzhou) in the fleet of Fernão Pires de Andrade leading an embassy sent by king Manuel I to

Zhengde Emperor The Zhengde Emperor (26 October 149120 April 1521), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Wuzong of Ming, personal name Zhu Houzhao, was the 11th List of emperors of the Ming dynasty, emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigning from 1505 to 1 ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

.Detailed information on this embassy in Tomé Pires, Armando Cortesão, Francisco Rodrigues, ''The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires: The Suma oriental of Tome Pires, books 1-5'', Introduction p.27 - 32, Armando Cortesão, Publisher Asian Educational Services, 1990, However, he was never received by the emperor, due to several setbacks, including the suspicion of the Chinese, and the plot moved by deposed sultan Mahmud Shah after the Portuguese conquest of

in 1511. The embassy fell in disgrace, with some of its members killed, starting a period of three decades of Portuguese persecution in China. Tomé Pires is said to have died of disease in 1524 in China, although some state he lived up to 1540 in

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

, but without permission to leave China. This was the first official embassy from a European nation to China after Giovanni de' Marignolli was sent as legate by the Papacy (in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

from 1342 to 1345).

Footnotes

Citations

Bibliography

* Albuquerque, L
“Tomé Pires”
in ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography''. 1974. Vol. 10, p. 616. * * * * *Madureira, Luis. "Tropical Sex Fantasies and the Ambassador's Other Death: The Difference in Portuguese Colonialism," ''Cultural Critique'' (Number 28; Fall of 1994): 149–173. *Muller, Karl, and David Pickell (eds) (1997). ''Maluku: Indonesian Spice Islands.'' (Singapore: Periplus Editions), p. 86. * *Wills, John E., Jr. (1998)
"Relations with Maritime Europe, 1514–1662"
in ''The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2'', 333–375. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote. New York: Cambridge University Press. .