'The friendship of kings was in the Ambassadors': Portuguese diplomatic embassies in Asia and Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

There has been from the very beginnings discussion as to the nature of Portuguese and European power in Asia in the early modern period prior to the Battle of Plassey and colonialism in all of its territorial manifestations. (1) Historians have moved on from considering it a Vasco da Gama epoch, with all the presumptions of hindsight and European superiority, to calling it an 'Age of Partnership', an 'Age of Brokerage', or perhaps most neutrally, but also evasively, an 'Age of Commerce'. (2) Historiography moved on again at some point in the mid-1990s from these broad generalizations regarding power relations into the realm of cultural history, to questions of first encounters and the intrinsic commensurability of the European and Asian worlds. (3) K. N. Chaudhuri's Asia Before Europe: economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750, and his use of set theory, probably represents the most ambitious (and most misunderstood) attempt at generating a one-to-one mapping of these two worlds. (4) By reducing them to their basic civilisational building blocks (food and drink, clothing, housing and attitudes to land and domestic animals) his approach sought to tackle the problem by starting from the most elemental aspects of the encounter of two worlds. But although this can tell us about how different peoples reacted to heat, animals, and the delimitation of space, and help us with regard to how to group different human societies, we are still very much left within the realm of human beings and the material world--at most the structures of production--and removed from the tricky and often intangible essence of power that inevitably constitutes relations between large groups of people brought into interaction. In this article, I would like to move beyond Chaudhuri's civilisational building blocks to question a highly formalized and ritual social function that brought Asians and Europeans together, but one that also dealt with the nerve essence of power, and that has been recognized for its instrumental importance in European expansion. (5) This is the issue of diplomatic embassies dispatched by the Portuguese to different corners of the Indian Ocean world.

It may well be worth starting with a clarification of terms, though, for the embassies analysed here and their international legal and institutional contexts would be scarce recognizable to Garrett Mattingly from his renowned study of Renaissance diplomacy, of 1955, or, indeed, to the Portuguese historians of diplomatic relations, like the Viscount of Santarem, who did not find them worthy of inclusion alongside European statecraft. (6) For a start, there was no web of permanent embassies such as had grown up amongst the major secular states of Italy by the 1450s, nor their methodic and standardized testimonials, the dispacci and relazioni. Portuguese embassies in the Indian ocean world, rather, were sent out individually when the occasion demanded, though the Jesuit missions could last some years. (7) In general, then, it would be hard to recognise here what subsequent historians have chosen to speak of as the 'origins of modern diplomacy', which M.S. Anderson has defined as 'a network of organized contacts which linked more or less continuously the states of western Europe'. On the other hand, it would be untrue to suggest that the authorities of respective Indian Ocean societies saw the Portuguese only as passing ships. (8) Most Asian receptions of the Portuguese, for example, distinguished between the paying of respects to the King in Portugal and his viceroy or governor in Goa.

Similar problems of recognition attach to categories and agents. One such arises in respect of the role of degredados, criminals and convicts deliberately left behind by Portuguese fleets in isolated places with instructions to forge links with local civilizations and obtain information on possible sources of precious metals by marching inland. They were not officially embassies (Timothy Coates speaks of them as 'cultural intermediaries'), but it was precisely the lack of any formality that enabled their diplomatic success. Degredados like Antonio Fernandes, for example, a humble ship's carpenter, managed to get his East African hosts to worship him, receiving him as some kind of god. (9)

A similar question applies to religious 'missions' aiming at conversion of local populations--were they embassies? The Dominican friar Gaspar da Cruz, who elected to visit Cambodia between 1555-56, in his account calls his trip an embassy, though many of the more grandiloquent like Xavier preferred to see themselves as 'apostles'. (10) From a functional perspective, however, there is little to separate 'embassy' and 'mission', and often they went together. Dias de Novais's embassy to the Ngola, which sought a commercial agreement that could set the stage for slave-trading, was accompanied by Jesuit colleagues who insisted that their purpose was to convert Ngola Ndambi and his subjects to Christianity. In this instance, however, the Ngola showed little interest beyond the gift his brother the king of Portugal had sent him, and the mission ended badly, with hostages taken and the rest of the mission expelled. (11)

Thirdly, there is the case of Portuguese envoys who were employed by native Asian societies. Should they be considered Portuguese diplomatic embassies? One such envoy, Tomas Pereira S.J., was sent by the boy-Emperor K'ang-hsi on behalf of the newly acceded Manchu dynasty to negotiate with the Russians at Nerchinsk, and played a key role in the historic compromise signed there in 1689. Given K'ang-hsi's personal verdict on Pereira, that he thought Pereira an honest and astute servant, it seems here that although not reneging on his faith, which was the case with so many Portuguese let loose in the East, Pereira's loyalties were entirely at the service of his host. (12) K'ang-hsi later took the unprecedented step of sending a Portuguese ambassador, Antonio de Magalhaes S.J., to Lisbon, to the court of D. Joao V, where he arrived on 20 December 1722. (13)

If the term embassy is problematic in the Portuguese overseas world, then so is the notion of ambassador. From reading Russell-Wood's survey book of 1992, A World on the move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia and America, one would think there was a natural cadre of ambassadors awaiting deployment. (14) This was true and also not true. Some, such as Ambassador Antonio Miranda de Azevedo, had impeccable credentials as Mayor and Sea Captain of Colombo (Ceylon), and Captain of the Pacem (Pasai) fortress in Sumatra. (15) Ambassador Pedro Vaz de Siqueira went on to become the Captain General of Macau in 1698. (16) Whether ambassadors received a distinct, professional training and were thus fully professionalised is, however, a good question. Diplomats were not universally homens de leis, as Jose Calvet de Magalhaes has argued was the case in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (17) Often 'ambassadors' are referred to as 'envoys' or 'orators', suggesting the profession was not a particularly established or specific one. On occasions, it was humanists at the royal court such as Damiao de Gois or trading factors (feitores) who were dispatched overseas. (18) Otherwise, prelates like Frei Domingos do Rosario often served as nuncios or ambassadors. (19) Rita Costa Gomes has suggested that their legal education and political experience rendered them suitable holders of high office, but there were additional factors in their favour: the vows of obedience made as members of an Order was some guarantee of their pliancy; they had a suitable second identity with which to travel under cover; they weren't accustomed to pomp or finery; as confessors, men of the church knew how to keep secrets. (20) I have not, however, found anything in the Portuguese archives from the first half of the sixteenth century that compares with the manual of the parfait diplomate unearthed from the French archives by E. Griseille, suggesting a specific code of comportment. (21)

Then there is the question of individual motivation. Some mouths clearly watered at the idea of ambassadorial service. Fernao Gomes de Lemos addressed his letter: 'Lord- because my desire has always been to die in things of augmentation of your royal estate, I accepted the embassy'. (22) But becoming an ambassador was not always a particularly desirable thing. Ambassadors would often be expected to pay for presents and conveyance up front, in expectation of a repayment by the Crown which, as Humberto Leitao has shown, was fairly unlikely given the fact that the Crown was unable to operate its own networks of payment due to the 'many deductions made by the officials whose responsibility it was to pay it'. (23) There are plenty of examples of Portuguese being more or less forced to assume the king's service on a completely ad hoc basis. Tome Pires was a humble apothecary, not even a physician, working at the feitoria in Malacca who, returning to Europe, was more or less coerced into making a U-turn at Cochin and lead an embassy back to China. Mendes Pinto was persuaded by the Captain of Malacca to go on a mission to the Battak upon 'the opportunity to make a bit of profit on the side' (porque talvez me montaria isso algum pedaco de proveito), which was apparently also Duarte Coelho's motive in accompanying Pires on his first attempt at reaching the Middle Kingdom. (24) Coelho was a simple gibiteiro (armour-maker). Duarte Fernandes was a tailor, and he was pressed into official service on the Siam mission on the strength of his knowledge of the Malay language. (25) Some of the Portuguese envoys were not even bona fide Portuguese: Duarte Fernandes and Duarte Coelho were cristaos novos, while Duarte Catanho, who attempted to act as mediator between the Portuguese and Ottoman empires at the time of their encounters in the Indian Ocean during and after the Ottoman campaign against Diu in 1538, was Venetian. (26)

One might think that as the new arrivals in the Indian Ocean World it would be the Portuguese who took the diplomatic initiative. But this was not true: upon the appointment of new captains to the post in Malacca or viceroys in Goa, the neighbouring kingdoms sent ambassadors to call on him and congratulate him on his appointment, with offers to renew the peace and friendship treaties maintained with the King of Portugal. (27) The Battak people of north-western Sumatra brought valuable gifts as well as a letter inscribed on a palm leaf, while the 'High Emperour of Inde', thought to be the Prester John, dispatched Matthew 'an Armenicane borne' together with James, a young 'Abessyne' noble, in 1514, in recognition of the arrival of Portuguese messengers. (28) Other polities, the Kingdom of Vijayanagar, for example, were slower to respond. This conforms with the theory proposed by M.S. Anderson whereby small states tended to send embassies 'driven by ambition and insecurity', whilst larger ones, such as France in the European case, were slowest to engage in diplomatic correspondance. (29) It is worth noting, also, that African embassies tended to be sent to Lisbon rather than Goa.

Taking the initiative was one thing, but the rules of European stately etiquette, as Garrett Mattingly has shown, demanded that despatching embassies was meant to function on the strict basis of reciprocity. In Asia, state interest and balance of power complicated this hypothetical equilibrium. Thus, for example, we can see how in the case of Miguel Ferreira's embassy to Persia in 1513, the arrival of a Persian embassy was immediately reciprocated by despatching a Portuguese one together with one of the Hidalcao, the King of Bijapur. (30) Here, the Safavids were a key ally of Portuguese in the containment of their dogged Ottoman rivals. The Portuguese did not, however, treat everybody like the Persians. A letter of the Captain of Malacca Ruy de Brito describes how he showed a Siamese delegation around Malacca and especially the artillery and things of war in 1514. He chose not to reciprocate their embassy arguing in a frank letter to Afonso de Albuquerque that 'they are not a people of whom we have need; the peace is more profitable to them than it is to us'. (31)

It is interesting, however, as we see in the aforementioned example, that the Portuguese often chose to dispatch an embassy in unison with an embassy of their local hosts. Duarte Fernandes was sent to the Kingdom of Siam in 1511 together with 'Chinese captains'. (32) It is not always clear here whether such actions were a diplomatic gesture to present a united and greater show of strength, whether it was a move to confer legitimacy in a world where the Portuguese were mere upstarts and where Siam was a tributary of the Middle Kingdom, or whether, as Jorge Flores would perhaps remind us, the Portuguese in the Age of Discovery were often without the means, even the ships themselves, to conduct the embassies. (33)

Precedence was a perpetual potential diplomatic thorn. Precedence was a feature of the highest political importance within the strict hierarchies of the ancien regime, and subject to complex computations. James Howell, in his Proedria-basilike of 1668 had concluded that there were ten factors commonly taken into consideration by ambassadors to determine precedence. (34) But these formulae had been tailored to a European schema; the Far East was another world. Joao Rodrigues described the etiquette on the road in Japan and advised all Europeans to dismount from their horse fifteen paces before passing a 'nobleman or person of quality'. (35) On the narrow imperial canal that took foreign tribute embassies to Peking, the problem was unavoidable. On one occasion, the Portuguese encountered the brother of the Feudatory Prince of Fukien, and it was not clear which party had precedence. Fortunately, thanks to 'the special work of the Divine Providence', storms of wind and rain blew up, the hawsers (cirgas) of the Portuguese junks were snapped, and the boats drifted to the other side of the canal whence they could proceed. (36)

The tasks of Portuguese diplomacy in the Age of Encounters

Embassies were, to be sure, a delicate game of political chess. But it is to the motivations behind Portuguese diplomatic missions and their allotted tasks that I now wish to turn. Diplomacy was, above all, not the straightforward function it assumed in the European state-system of the first half of the nineteenth century, the last resort before war. (37) On the contrary, war was not something the Portuguese shied away from, and grandes feitos, or great military deeds, were very much the currency of political achievement in the Estado da India as a cursory reading of any official chronicle would attest. In the Age of Encounters, diplomacy covered for a host of different tasks. What follows, then, is an attempt at typologising them.

1. To acquire information. In the case of Tome Pires' mission of 1516 to the Celestial Court: the chronicler Castanheda tells us that his nomination was made on the basis that Pires was 'discreet and eager to learn (curioso), and because he would know better than anyone else the drugs there were in China', in other words, commercial espionage. (38) Mendes Pinto was dispatched to the Battak to observe the progress of war against a common enemy, the Achinese. (39) The embassy of Antonio de Miranda de Azevedo was to be accompanied by Manuel Fragoso so as to prepare a book upon the manners, dress, trade, and latitude of harbors of the King of Siam. (40)

2. To broadcast Portuguese power and military successes. The regimento which dispatched Duarte Fernandez to the Kingdom of Siam explicitly stated its role as boasting Albuquerque's success in taking Malacca in 1511, and Antonio de Abreu's mission to the islands of the Moluccas was to announce to the kings and lords of the spice islands the advantages of commerce with Malacca (notificar que todos viessem [a Malaca] sem receio algum; ca lhes seria guardada sua justice, e feito todo favor em seus negocios). (41)

3. Often diplomatic embassies were swapped to see what trade could be done. The King of Lar, for example, sent an ambassador to Ormuz with a letter of great offering 'of all that he had in his land' and sent a horse. Fernao Martins Evangelho was dispatched in turn 'with betilhas--fine muslin and other merchandise of Your Highness to sell and to employ in horses and in any other profitable merchandise'. (42)

4. As Ibrahim Beg (Braym Beca), a captain of Xeque Ismael, told Fernao Gomes de Lemos in Persia: 'the friendships of Kings were in the ambassadors'. (43) Friendship was vital for securing support for the Portuguese, tenuously established in the East. The support of the Kingdom of Siam for the supply of Malacca at a time when Portuguese conquest of that port city had antagonized neighbouring rulers was the goal of three successive embassies the Portuguese sent there. Duarte Coelho was dispatched in 1518 to 'ask him [the king] to send some of his subjects to people Malacca, as asked previously, since his intention was to be rid of the Malayan Moors, and peopling it from his, it would be a means whereby they could better communicate with the Portuguese in amity and peace'. (44)

5. Treaty signing was an integral part of the embassy's work. That signed with Bijapur in 1571 recognised the rights of Adil Shah to six free cartazes and the importation of 25 horses a year, or to get, for example, Abdullah Qutb Shah to restore San Thome to the Estado. (45) But treaties (tratados) were rarely of the same ilk as those drafted between states in Europe and we are often warned--here regarding the purported Siamese-Portuguese treaty signed in 1516 or 1518--that they are to be understood in a 'informal, non-diplomatic sense', particularly when originals are not readily located in the archives. (46)

6. Some embassies were sent to ransom Christian hostages taken in military campaigns. In the Spanish account La Vida de Jacques de Coutre, friar Frei Jorge da Mota, a Dominican, comes to Malacca in 1595 to urge intervention on this account. (47) But there was a twist: when the ten or eleven man strong embassy arrived in Siam, they were taken as slaves, which is how Frei Jorge had presented their coming to the Siamese monarch. Whereupon the Siamese monarch ordered the preparation of a huge junk, again with twin ambassadors and rich presents for the Portuguese king. There were, of course, plenty of benefits for Frei Jorge who took credit for engineering the 'donation'. Though, we might be pleased to note, the ruse didn't work out.

7. Religious missions as embassies. The most renowned of these were probably the repeated missions to the court of the Mughal rulers Akbar and Jahangir, sent after a diplomatic letter was received requesting two Catholic missionaries together with 'the chief books of the Law and the Gospel', and which, wrote Matteo Ricci, entertained high hopes for 'nothing less than the conversion of all India'. (48) The voluminous correspondence of Jeronimo Xavier, his letters to his superiors and to his family, as well as his Tratado da Corte e Casa de Iamguir Pacha rey dos Mogores constitutes a marvel of social and cultural observation, especially on the themes that most fascinated western Europeans, namely the harem and the imperial treasury, but ultimately, Xavier's presence was motivated by his hope that both emperors would be drawn towards Christianity and it was the temporary conversion of Jahangir's nephews which delighted him.

8. Diplomacy as threat. Demands voiced by Portuguese embassies with threats include those made by Francisco Cutrim de Magalhaes in 1646 that the King of Siam Prasat Thong expel 'enemies of Europe', European rivals of the Portuguese, from his ports and that he encourage his own direct commerce between Siam and Japan so that Japanese silver could still be obtained regardless of the 'sakoku rei' edict. (49) Or the demand made of the Sultan Ahmed of Gujurat to turn over the Ottoman naval commander Sidi Ali to the Portuguese on the grounds that he was an enemy agent. (50)

A question of form: the theatricality of power

Embassies, as already noted, were a matter of delicate political etiquette. But whose etiquette, European or Asian? An analysis of the elements of the protocol observed by Portuguese embassies in the East will serve to clarify this question. Diplomatic form, needless to say, was dictated by a delicate political calculus. The Portuguese could, for example, afford to openly reject the practice of the King of Demak, whose ambassadors were elderly or widowed women, due to a custom that held that the gentle sex was endowed (as Mendes Pinto explains) with 'more affability (afabilidade) and authority'; that men, by contrast, were too blunt and less likely to meet with favor. (51) But the missions to the court of the Emperors in Peking, in the pre-Macartney era, represented the other end of the political spectrum, where Europeans were without exception obliged to submit to Chinese prescription. Rules on how the embassy was to proceed had been established by a Board of Ceremony, right down to the number of banquets that would be held and the number of kow-tows that needed to be made to the imperial party. The Portuguese had no choice but to comply, or their embassies would simply be rejected.

Etiquette, whether Asian or European was, however, of the essence. The tribulations of an ad-hoc embassy like Fr Francis Xavier's 'Voyage to Meaco' [Kyoto], which failed to adopt appropriate etiquette, are a good illustration. An embassy unannounced, if it did not incur out of hand rejection, at the very least suffered lack of assistance. Xavier's 'Voyage to Meaco' was made at a time of year when people--his biographer points out--'do not have any communication with each other, but by cover'd walks and Galleries' and the ice was such that 'the Travellers fell at every step; without mentioning those prodigious Icicles, hanging over their head, from the high Trees, and threatening the Passengers at every moment with their fall'. (52) Lucky to have survived the ordeal, Xavier ran into other problems. His humble attire--the penitential garb of his order--evoked the strongest reactions in Japan, where he was condemned as 'a wretch forsaken and accurst by all the world; that the vermin which are swarming all over him are too nice to feed on his infectious flesh'. (52) As a mendicant friar, he was used to traveling without money, claiming the rights of his station as he went along (though, as he himself confessed, while in Japan he 'received in alms more than a thousand cruzados', not to mention the proceeds from the 'thirty bars of the finest pepper' the Captain of Malacca Dom Pedro da Silva had contributed towards the mission). (53) Confronted with toll-gates on his journey to Kyoto, and dismissed as a vagrant, the saintly father was forced to 'act as footman to noblemen whom he could approach along the road' to thus get a free ride. (54)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Hitch-hiking, rags and vagabondage was not, however, the norm for the vast majority of Portuguese embassies, and Xavier's was consequently an unsuccessful one. Xavier may have had his personal reasons for traveling as he did: Ines []upanov is tempted to see in these journeys the dramaturgic challenge of transcendence of self, or as Roberto de Nobile explained 'occasions to suffer for Our Lord Jesus Christ'. (55) But successful embassies demanded protocol and established procedure, pomp and circumstance. Many of the civilizations of the East, and particularly China and Japan, suffered from a particularly powerful form of omphalos syndrome, that is, the natural tendency to consider oneself the center of the world. As a consequence, they could not imagine that the reason European embassies were arriving on their shores was a result of anything other than their being, in the Jesuit Visitor Andrea Valignano's words, 'poor people and people of lowly condition'. (56) The Portuguese imperial administration was keen that missions such as Xavier's would not prove them right, and much of the pomp and circumstance detailed below was designed to dispell this preconception. To the same end, they called for Asian embassies to be sent to Europe where they could be duly impressed, as Valignano explained, by 'the greatness and wealth of our cities' and 'the glory and grandeur of the Christian religion. (57)

Protocol in formal Portuguese embassies

We turn now to an overview of the protocol followed in the conduct of the Portuguese embassies, and how it differed at the various Asian courts. By the nature of the exercise, what follows is somewhat descriptive, but from it may be discerned the degree of acculturation of Portuguese diplomatic practice, the key moments in the passage of an embassy and some of the salient and often tricky issues which emerged.

(a) Official departure and personnel

The embassy would depart after a sounding of many trumpets. The embassies carried mandados or letters of command, and there were some notebooks of remembrances (cadernos) made, often kept by a scribe (though many of these were destroyed in the Lisbon fire of 1755, chroniclers like Gaspar Correia had made use of them). (58) The size of the Portuguese embassies in the East was always a fraction of that of the embassies dispatched in the West. The Polish embassy that arrived in France to offer the Polish throne to Henry of Anjou in August 1573, for example, included 12 ambassadors, both Protestant and Catholic, accompanied by 250 Polish gentry in exotic attire. (60) In the East, on the other hand, there was a first and second ambassador (since the first could easily die, as happened to Saldanha in China), a lingua, or interpreter, a chaplain (who often doubled as a scribe and served as a prominent figure for solemn occasions, particularly important in societies where High Priests were called upon to officiate) and a musketeer. The party also included some who tagged along for personal reasons: 'to see the world' (ver mundo), as was the case with Antonio Tenreiro, who has left us an interesting account of his journey, or to escape some trouble at home. (61) Then there was a locally-employed guide (shauter in the Arab world), and invariably a congregation of 4-5 slaves (criados) whose names are rarely listed. If they did not travel on camels as they did in Persia, or horses with protective awnings, then their job was porterage. Here they substituted the mocos de estribeira, who had served to carry the rich gifts to, for example, the King of Granada in 1370, or missives to the papal court. (62) Otherwise, they carried the ambassador, in a palanquim or, as was the case in Africa, a machila, a simpler and altogether less showy construction than a palanquim (see figs. 2, 3 and 4).

[FIGURES 2-4 OMITTED]

In the absence of these conveyances, the slaves were at least to protect the ambassador with a parasol, as we see from the Japanese namban screen (fig. 5) depicting the passage of a Portuguese embassy. In Japan, as captured on the namban screens, embassies attracted enormous attention. This attention, however, was not always welcome. There was the problem of young boys running alongside throwing stones and shouting 'Core, Core, Cocore, Ware'. (63) For a long time, following Engelbert Kaempfer's The history of Japan of 1727, this was misunderstood by historians as some kind of curse, until Ronald Toby showed that this was a cultural misunderstanding: the Portuguese were taken to be Korean captives who had passed through Hokkien as captives during the Japanese invasions between 1592-98. (64)

[FIGURES 5-6 OMITTED]

Although analysis of the Monsoon Books (Livros das Moncoes) shows that Viceroys and Governors devoted particular attention to matters of state amongst the Reis Vizinhos, the neighbouring kingdoms, embassies commonly voyaged over great distances to far-flung potentates. The embassy of Fernao Gomes de Lemos to Persia journeyed 285 'great leagues' and spent 'three months and so many days in coming' and 'the majority of the journeys were conducted at night because of the great heat'. (65) The embassy of Balthasar Pessoa was obliged to winter (invernar): they chose the city of Caixao (Kashan) by reason of the comparative mildness of the climate ('porque esta terra he mais temperada'). (66) To avoid the threat of raiders attacking their convoys, embassies often joined muleteers and camel caravans (cafilas) as a safety precaution, though they were often obliged to 'purchase the leadership' of these caravans for a sum, typically 200 bags of musk. The ambassadors could then hope to recoup that money through bribes from merchants desperate to be included in the cafila. (67)

By the rules of diplomacy in the East, foreign embassies were obliged to be fed and housed at the charge of the hosts, and even given expense money. (68) Even when some embassies came unannounced, the caravanserais in Central Asia had been instituted and given funds so that foreign embassies would not pay.

There the guests were served bread with honey and then meat in proportion to their standing. Governors along the route in Persia commonly issued convites, or invitations to parties. At these instruments were played, drinks were served from beautiful bottles, and guests were invited to pass over the fota, which was a long piece of silk or other rich cloth. A great deal of wine was drunk, and when his guests became tipsy, the host undressed them and girded them in local dress complete with sword as a means of ingratiating them. (69)

(b) Gifts

This was a very important feature of protocol and official lists of gifts were made in advance. (70) It was easy to cause offense. Apparently the Portuguese had not learnt the lesson of Vasco da Gama, whose original gift of 'twelve pieces of lambel (lambeis), four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case containing six wash-hand basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil and two of honey' had turned him into a laughing stock at the Samorin's court in Calicut. (71) Even before the outset of his embassy, Ambassador Saldanha cringed at the embarrassing meanness of the gifts (known as sagoate) he had been able to purchase: 'the benzoin a few miserable grains, the amber like gravel, the coral very small.. the rose water is spring water'. (72) But the largely improvised nature of many of the embassies made it hard to always find suitable gifts. Luis Frois brought a large glass mirror, a hat, a cane, some amber and a little musk 'as he had little else available' for the Kubo Sama, the 'supreme emperor of Miyako', Shogun Yoshiteru. (73) Saldanha pulled it off, but other embassies such as that of Balthasar Pessoa were turned back if the presents were of too little value. (74)

Offence could be caused in other ways. Dom Lima for example, when asked by the Bahrnagas for his best sword, turned instead to a companion to offer them his. That night the embassy's stores were broken into and munitions stolen to revenge the slight. (75)

So what were the presents Portuguese embassies ordinarily took? To start with, embassies often brought a picture of their king or viceroy, as was the case with Saldanha's embassy to Bejing, or Don Luis de Navarrete Fajardo's embassy to Osaka in 1597, where the governor in question was Filippino. (76) Or else, polyglot bibles made a good gift: the eight-volume Plantin edition presented to Akbar, for example, which was elegantly produced (por ser mui bem encadernada e dourada) though Matteo Ricci was evidently aware of the difficulties ahead in its practical application: 'In saying that these are Muslims I am also saying what difficulties we can expect the devil to put in our way, as he has in the past'. (77) Da Lima took it upon himself to bring a huge four-poster bed with yellow and blue tafetta curtains, blankets embroidered with the Portuguese coat of arms, and a canopy that showed an emperor crowning a queen while four men sounded trumpets. Obviously it was impossible that such an object could survive the journey, as Gaspar Bocarro was also disappointed to conclude with respect to his own weighty bed (tamanha cama) 'which included a carpet, a damask bolster and sheets' when returning from his posting to the East African interior. (78) Thus da Lima found himself with four lengths of tapestry, the original musical organ, a golden sword with rich hilt, two old short cannon with powder and shot, some pieces of armor and a map of the world. (79)

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

Organs (horgaos) and clavichords (crauos pera tanger), it seems, were good gifts, generally of the portable variety, but sometimes the full church-scale instrument, to be assembled on arrival. (80) Christovao de Figueiredo brought 'certain organs' together with a variety of 'other things' (pecas) on his journey to the court of the King of Daquem. (81) Another remarkable gift that traveled overland with the Portuguese was a lion brought for the sake of the Chinese court by the Ambassador Bento Pereira de Faria in 1678. Like Da Lima's four-poster bed, the lion was destined not to survive the journey despite the tender care of a Papango (Filipino) lion-tamer. However, its mere arrival in Peking was enough to ensure its burial in a magnificent marble monument with an epitaph 'as is done for highly esteemed mandarins'. (82) Unlike Da Lima's expedition, Pereira de Faria's diplomatic mission succeeded in its goals, and resulted in the legalisation of Macao's maritime trade from 1681.

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

(c) Food

By the rules of diplomacy in the East, embassies were obliged to be fed at the charge of the hosts. But this too could present problems. Pimentel was disgusted by the banqueting food the Chinese laid on for his party: 'the meats that are offered are so underdone and badly cooked (tao engroladas, e mal cozidas) that they seem raw, so that one cannot eat without losing one's composure, grasping with the hands and tearing off with the teeth, like some glutton or sheepdog'. But worse was to come. Pimentel was at subsequent banquets presented with sheeps' heads 'with two horns so large that they frightened me. . the head was so little cleaned that by its wool I knew that the sheep had been black.' (83) Pimentel's account is corroborated by the sensibilities of later European embassies, like that of Isaac Titsingh and Braam Houckgeest, where the Emperor sent 'a dish with pieces of game, looking as if they were remnants of gnawed-off bones. They were dumped on the table'. (84) Galeote Pereira, by contrast, for whatever reason overlooks the quality of Chinese cuisine in favour of the generosity of hospitality with which he and his party was received. (85)

Eating with the Japanese provided a major test for the Portuguese which they failed, eating with their hands rather than with sticks. They were treated at the Daimyo of Bungo's table to a farce acted out by the King's daughter, in which a large number of wooden arms were brought out proposing to 'remedy the great physical defect from which they suffer all the time', namely eating with their hands so that by necessity 'they would be smelling all the time of fish, or meat, or whatever else we [sic] ate with them'. (86)

(d) Dress

If food was problematic, dress was another extremely important and sensitive issue. We have witnessed the reactions to Father Francis Xavier's humble attire. Later members of the religious establishment on official visits learned from these mistakes: none more so than the Portuguese embassy sent to negotiate with kampaku Hideyoshi in 1590 and desperate to overturn the anti-Christian edict of 25 July 1587. Understanding the need to be on best appearances, Luis Frois describes how Father Vilela managed to fangle 'a wide cassock with long sleeves' from 'a cope with a very old brocade hood and a worn camblet counterpane'. Frois himself went in a 'mantle with accompanying costume, and some high-soled half-boots (huns chapins) of spun silk, as the Chinese mandarins wear and other people of authority'. (87) The Shogun was quite impressed, and called Frois back to inspect the cope, calling it mezurashii i.e. something novel. It was taken to him and returned immediately. As Frois reports, the effect of appearing 'so illustrious and well-attired, as no other people had ever been in Japan' enabled their host 'to remain with a great conception of our things, which gave the greatest and best credit to our Holy Law, because the Japanese said that such clean and honourable people could not but help have the very best things'. (88)

Portuguese envoys to China were similarly careful to dress in the finest clothes, if only to impress the Celestial Court with their gravity and importance. Thus Ambassador Manoel de Saldanha left Canton dressed with crimson satin adorned with silver trimmings. His quarters in the lead boat he occupied were richly decorated with carpets, furniture upholstered in velvet, and damask curtains and he ordered 'the accompaniment of flags and trumpets'. (89)

(e) Meeting the embassies

As they were notified of the embassy's imminent arrival, local rulers liked to send out their officials and escorts to neighbouring villages, often with a suitable means of conveyance. These officials were shahbandars in the Malay tradition, while the Kingdom of Pegu sent out its Viceroy and Chief Priest. The King of Siam had bamboo pavilions erected along the route the ambassadors were to follow, while Mughal Emperor Akbar sent two mules to Goa in 1579 so that the missionaries might travel in greater comfort. Fernao Mendes Pinto didn't like these escorts: he complained of the noisiness, 'the timbals and bells and crewmen shouting all the way'. (90) In Japan, the tradition stipulated that the embassy present itself on disembarkation at the office of the Quansio-andano, the Admiral of the Sea, who might then provide horses and men to lead the embassy. The idea was pretty much the same in China--though at times, the bureaucratic arrangements were so complicated that the result was inactivity. Manoel de Saldanha's embassy to the Celestial court was kept waiting in Canton from November 21, 1667 until January 1670, that is over two years!

The form adopted by the embassies was fairly standardised: after the presents were handed over, the official business could begin at the court or royal palace. Here there were always plenty of ante-chambers, where the embassy was kept waiting; the milling around of armed men reported in Vasco da Gama's account finds its match in Miguel Ferreira's where 'the patio was full of armed people who appeared to be ten thousand', whilst in Bungo, 'thousands of arquebusiers' thronged the passageways. (91)

(f) Audiences with local rulers

The foreigners were disarmed as a safety precaution the Chinese officials from the Board of Ceremonies insisted on, following attempts by Chinese feudatories to assassinate the Emperor during audiences, though despite the ambassador's displeasure it was a common practice in Europe as well, as O. Krauske has shown. (92) Then they were brought in by court officials like the porteyro moor (Chief Doorkeeper), in Abyssinia by the betudeti, or Chief Justices, or on other occasions the vedor (Inspector of the Revenues). At Campalator in Sumatra it was an elderly woman who acted as usher into the throne room--she welcomed the men from Malacca with the following little speech: 'Your coming here into this land of the king my lord is as gratifying to him as the raindrops falling on our rice fields in a time of drought. Enter and have no fear, since by the grace of God we are all people like you, and we trust in Him that it will always be so, forever and ever, until the end of time'. (93)

Nobles would be often sitting on the floor as was the case at Hideyoshi's court; often other foreign ambassadors were also present. In some Asian societies, or as with the Negus in Abyssinia, monarchs were secluded in rooms normal mortals were not welcome. Decorations held an important function: that of inspiring awe. Some, for example, were covered in gold, whilst in Bungo, Japan, the throne was 'specially constructed for the occasion'. The Persian monarchs were often off campaigning and were thus encountered in their arrayal, or encampment, where the chief tent was entirely arrayed in colored satins and with many flourishes, and carpeted with luxurious carpets and with many silk cushions.

Courtesies and kow-tows followed. While the Ambassador of Narsinga remained standing at the Viceroy's court in Goa, Miguel Ferreira kneeled, Lemos kissed the Sheik's hand and foot, while Pinto touched his knee to the floor three times as he handed over his letter and gift to the King of the Battak. (94) Placing the letter directly in the King's hands was, in Siam however, a direct affront to custom, so that the ambassador had rather to place it in a gold cup which was then handed over by a rod of the same material through a window to the King. (95) In Japan, it was simply the secretary (Quansio Gritau) who did the honours.

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

The question of who was subsequently entrusted to act as translator (lingua) was a difficult and very important one as proverbial wisdom 'traduttore, traditore' has long recognized, and as Dejanirah Couto has recently demonstrated. (96) K'ang-hsi, the Emperor of China, fostered the community of westerners at his court so as to avoid recourse to interpreters when dealing with papal legates, for to him they were a shorthand for distrust and awkwardness. (97) However, the Portuguese clearly preferred to bring their own interpreters, in the case of Paulo Rodrigues da Costa's expedition to the Kingdom of Sada in Madagascar in 1613, so as to 'facilitate conversation with the King' and help the expedition to obtain provisions and sought-after information. (98)

But it was not always enough for the Portuguese to bring their own interpreter. We might like to consider the embassy sent to Bengal in 1521 as Correia recounts. (99) A renegade, Joao de Borba (known for his linguistic gifts) served as an interpreter in a dissension between Antonio de Brito and, a Turk, Ali Aga. During the course of the discussion, he "translated" one of the answers in an entirely different way, for his own convenience. There is also the example of Duarte Barbosa, arrested by Afonso de Albuquerque, 'because he is an interpreter and cause of all these revolts' (porque ele he lymguoa e causa de todas estas revoltas). (100) As interpreters were often accomplished intermediaries with no fixed loyalties, renegades as we have seen, or Jews like Antonio de Noronha and Gaspar da Gama, the problem was an endemic one. (101)

Specific constraints were consequently imposed on the lingua to ensure his loyalty and correct deportment. In 1510 Albuquerque sent the delegation of Ruy Gomes de Carvalhosa to Shah Isma'il at Gaur with interesting, well specified instructions: the lingua should not add a single word beyond those of the ambassador during the audience, always remaining by his side, and should be lodged in isolated accommodation for the duration of his mission. (102)

(g) Ritualised speeches or introductions

Ritualised speeched or introductions began, the Japanese Emperor Hideyoshi announcing himself in terms of divine favour and descendance from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Onikami, rather than the legitimacy of his lineage as a European monarch might have done: 'When I was born a sunbeam fell on my chest, and when the diviners were asked about this, they told me that I was to be ruler of all that lies between east and west'. (103) Many Asian rulers similarly announced themselves in terms of a grandiloquent and loosely defined set of territories they lorded over. Krishnaray (Pg. Crisnarao), a Maharajah in central India, liked to announce himself 'King of Kings, Lord of the greater lords of India, Lord of the Three Seas and of the Land'. (104)

The terms by which the Portuguese addressed native rulers is matter-of-fact and altogether predictable, as a letter of Afonso de Albuquerque to the King of Persia carried by Ruy Gomes attests: 'Very great and powerful lord amongst the Moors Xeque Ismael [of Persia]'. (105) Reciprocal letters or addresses from Asian rulers were always much more colorful and reflect, for example, the heightened need for flattery and displays of deference in a hierarchalised court society, such as that of the Javanese Kraton or the Ottoman Porte. A letter from Suleyman the Magnificent after the epithet 'he who is granted victory [always]' went:

To the paragon of the great Christian Princes, the model of the dignitaries in the nation of the Messiah, the promoter of improvements with the people of Christian Community, trailing trains of majesty and dignity, the master of fame and glory, the King of Portugal, may his ultimate results be terminated with success, as soon as this exalted Imperial letter] reaches your hand. (106)

The Sultan of Ternate Abu Hayat coloured his hyperbole with a tone of filial devotion when he referred to the King of Portugal 'the great king of the whole world, the great lord' as his uncle. (107) Mendes Pinto, however, is almost certainly guilty of fabrication when he puts the following words into the mouth of Angeesiry Timorraja, King of the Battak:

I .. desirous above all others to be of service to the Crown Lion, whose throne of awesome splendor spans the ocean waves, over which he reigns with incredible power wherever the four winds blow, that magnificent prince of great Portugal. (108)

[FIGURES 10-11 OMITTED]

Firstly, it has been established that the Battak 'lack the complex etiquette and social hierarchy of the Hinduized people of Indonesia'. (109) Secondly the cosmographical construct of the 'four winds' was very much a European invention and far-removed from the dichotomy dividing the lands above from the lands below 'the winds', here meaning the monsoon, which characterized the cosmology and more widely the identities of the peoples of South-East Asia. (110) Thirdly, the 'Crown Lion' of Portugal does not correspond to any official symbol of state, Portuguese or Battak, but appears to have appealed to Mendes Pinto who employs it again in the context of a speech made by the 'King of Bungo', Otomo Yoshishige, in Japan (leao coroado no trono do mundo). (111) The lion was a symbol employed rather in the Turkish world to represent sovereignty, power, sun and light. (112)

(h) Official business

The ambassador stated his business. Often this would seem quite invasive, such as the desire to take soundings of the river to determine 'if it was deep enough for our large naos and galleons to enter' (que bracas de fundo tinha o rio). (113) The native ruler would then respond. The king of the Battak prayed out aloud in front of a shrine, kneeling in front of a shelf or mantelpiece where there was a skull of a cow. While all anthropologists who have worked on the Battak would point to the highly evolved nature of ancestor worship amongst those people and the elaborate attention to genealogies, the Dutch ethnologist Roo de la Faille explains the cow's head as a symbolic reference to the ancient kingdom of Menangkabow, held in deep reverence by all states of Sumatra. (114)

This was followed by implorations that the friendship be preserved, accompanied by a participative audience raising their hands and repeating the words pachy parau tinacor! 'Oh but to live to see it come true and gladly die'. Large participative audiences (on Alvarez's visit in 1520, as many as 20,000!) were also used as a political tool at the court of the Negus, who were solicited by the Master of Ceremonies to scrutinize the presents brought by the foreign ambassador but also to thank God for bringing the Christians together. (115)

(i) The swearing of friendship, and writing up of Capitulations

Amity and peace was then sworn. As Soares Martinez points out, the culmination of a diplomatic mission in the East often remained a merely verbal accord, in accordance with indigenous rites and uses. (116) The capitulations with Pegu, however, were written down with a leaf of beaten gold, then read twice in a high voice in the two respective languages. An oath was made ('read from a book of their religion') and at the end of their reading the King took some yellow paper, the colour of divine cults, and burned it. And he placed the hands of the High Priest between his, and put them upon the ashes saying some words, to which the Samibeleyam responded. The Portuguese ambassador Antonio Correa feeling obliged to respond swore a similar oath on his song-book as it was in a rather better state than his battered prayer-book, from which the chaplain of the ship 'in his white surplice' commenced to read certain trovas or ballads from the Ecclesastics of Solomon. (117)

Some oaths took on physical manifestions. The King of Siam raised a great cross of wood with the arms of this kingdom at the foot, and buried a servant of the Duke of Braganca who had died of sickness. (118)

(j) Entertainments

After the formalities had been dispensed with, chit-chat could follow. Some of it was personal. The native rulers asked for the names of the ambassador and all his retinue. Otherwise, the authorities he represented became the focus of discussion. Was the Pope alive? How many kings were there in Hispania? What was the age of the king? How many children did he have?

It seems that often Asian rulers were led into thinking the Portuguese monarch was more powerful than he really was. The Daimyo of Bungo, for example, refers to 'the land at the end of the world known as Chenchicogim, where reigns, by the power of great fleets and armies comprised of people from different nationalities, the crowned lion of great Portugal'. (119) There were questions about the governor of India (or if it turned out, Malacca), if he was a king, and the state of affairs there.

In early modern Japan, consumed as it was by 'the age of war' prior to the entrenchment of the Tokugawa dynasty, questions invariably hinged on military affairs, and specifically Portugal's military capabilities. How many armed men did the Kingdom support, and of which type of arms? The Preste of Abyssinia, threatened by the encroachments of the Moors from the coastal areas, fielded similar concerns. Were the Portuguese frightened of the Moors? Could they send weapons from Portugal and build fortresses in Massaua, Suakin and Zeila, furnish captains to defend them and free the road to Jerusalem? (120) This type of questioning went on for half an hour, with the King enjoying 'grandiose replies' (grandiosas respostas). (121)

After this detente, more personal business was attended to, such as arrangements for the sale of private merchandise brought on the embassy. In the Kingdom of Miyako in Japan, the embassy was obliged to visit the 'emperor's' mother and father, but other courtesies such as a chief official of the court (vedor de fazenda) taking the ambassador (here Ferreira) on a guided tour of the city, or the monarch inviting to accompany him on a hunt, often with the presentation of a suitable personalized weapon, were commonplace. The embassy of Duarte Fernandez in 1511 to Rama Tibodi II, King of Siam, was received with the greatest honours: he was taken by the King on a tour of the city and shown the King's white elephant, an object of especial veneration across South-East Asia. (122)

In Africa, it always proved very difficult for the embassy to be allowed to leave, and were often coerced into remaining. African potentates often insisted on detaining missionaries 'so as to increase the worldly glory of His Majesty.' (123) This was the upshot of Covilha's mission in search of Prester John: Covilha chanced upon the Emperors of Ethiopia, Na'od refused to let him leave, and he was still there when Dom Rodrigo da Lima, leader of the Portuguese embassy, arrived in 1520. (124) The da Lima expedition itself was detained for at least five years, and only returned in 1526. It is a phenomenon Timothy Severin calls 'gilded captivity', though conditions were not bad: most were offered pensions and wives and not treated badly. (125) In Asia, we can find traces of the same. The King desired Miguel Ferreira to sleep with a woman 'so that he would leave a son or daughter behind'. (126)

(k) Departure

Finally, the King distributed his presents to the embassy party and consigned letters to be sent to both the Viceroy in Goa or Captain of Malacca, and the King of Portugal. One way to be sure that one's diplomatic mission had succeeded was to be offered certain gifts in return. Francisco Cabral, a keystone of the Jesuit presence in the Far East at the end of the sixteenth century, was offered by the Limsitao, or prefect in the city of Chao ch'ing, 'a piece of white silk cloth, six fans, and four of those maps by Father Matteo [Ricci]'. He realized the importance of this gesture when 'this was quickly known throughout the city, and some of the principals came to congratulate us for the honor and compliments that the limsitao gave us'. (127) Domingo Paes' narrative of southern India is marked by a deep respect for the elusive character of Christovao de Figueiredo, whose embassies were invariably showered with presents. Paes witnessed Figueiredo's receiving 'a tunic of brocade (cabaya) with a cap of the same fashion as the king wore', while 'to each of the accompanying Portuguese he offered a cloth embroidered with many pretty figures'. (128) It was ironic that a cap be offered to the Portuguese ambassador: these caps (barretos) were the standard petty item that both Portuguese and Spanish discoverers distributed amongst the tribesmen they encountered during the Voyages of Discovery. (129)

The Daimyo of Bungo concluded by making a little speech beseeching the Viceroy not to forget the homage paid and employs, like we saw in the announcement by his compatriot Hideyoshi, the theme of sunlight to suggest that the friendship last a long time: 'for as long as the sun does not fail to produce the effect for which God created it, nor the waters of the ocean cease to rise and fall over the shores of the earth'. (130)

How much did Portuguese embassies accomplish?

In the preceding section, I have sketched the protocol for embassies that ran smoothly. Many of course, like Francis Xavier's 'Voyage of Meaco' did not, but in large part because it took place outside the framework of protocol that I have established. The four embassies sent to Peking from Macau to redress the crisis which beset that colony from the 1640s also failed, for political reasons rather than any great lapses in protocol. (131) Ambassador Goncalo de Siqueira de Sousa was turned back on arrival in Japan in 1644, though admittedly did fairly well to survive with his and his companions' lives given the 1640 sakoku-rei edict, which threatened that any Portuguese vessel coming into a Japanese harbor would be put to death to the last man. (132) Other incidents suggest that one of the fundaments of modern diplomacy, namely the personal immunity of the members of the embassy, was totally lacking. A quick roster of episodes that befell Portuguese embassies in the East is enough to demonstrate that the risks were of a completely different order to diplomatic realities in Europe at the time, where the principal dangers occurred in 'third' countries that were neither sending, nor receiving the embassies. (133) Ambassador Anrique Leme was chased off from Pantani and his ship set on fire and other incidents attest to Portuguese embassies being set upon by 'a body of Moors' wielding iron clubs and assisted by local people who threw stones, darts and arrows from nearby houses. (134) Problems with Muslims dominate incidents of this kind.

There are instances, too, where the ambassadors were murdered by their hosts. This was the case with Ruy Gomes, poisoned by his Persian host Cogeatar (Khwaja Atar), and the ambassador who, together with the King of Ternate, fell victim to the King of Tidor. (135) In similar fashion, Ambassador Tome Pires was not only ill-received at the Chinese court and refused an audience with the Emperor on account of the misbehaviour of Portuguese traders and sailors like Simao de Andrade in southern China, denunciations of the Portuguese seizure of Malacca in 1511 by one of the Chinese tributary rulers, the ousted sultan of Malacca, breaches of protocol in the letters Pires bore, and reports of unscrupulous business practice. Returning to Canton, he was imprisoned together with three or four compatriots and, from the letter of Pires's prison companion Cristovao Vieira, it seems he died in 1524 after prolonged suffering, privations and probably torture. (136) Others ambassadors--more disturbingly, perhaps--were poisoned not by their hosts, but by their own slaves. (137)

Finally, if by way of conclusion we were to try to weigh up the balance sheet of how much diplomatic missions accomplished, Braym Beca's declaration that 'the friendship of Kings was in the ambassadors' suggests that rather than efforts to avert crisis, diplomacy played an important role in establishing contact. Diplomacy, then, was not so much the prevention of war as the making of friendships, though diplomacy too had on occasion to bear threats. Specific political gambits depended very much on the wider circumstances and the behaviour of the individual embassy, but on the whole helped if only to facilitate dialogue. It can be considered remarkable that the Ottomans could threaten the Portuguese frankly with seizure of their lands in the event that an embassy that had been dispatched could not resolve points of tension. (138)

Otherwise, trade was certainly the pre-eminent success story of diplomatic interaction, but perhaps this was the most universal language that inter-cultural contact could make. (139) This would serve then to reinforce the notion of an 'Age of Commerce'.

Religious missions were clearly the least successful of the genre. Here as the Japanese Daimyo of Bungo explained to Father Belchior, if his subjects were to see any change in him they would turn to the 'bonzes' (Pg. bonzos), that is the priestly authority, even if he the King personally enjoyed talking about 'the grandeur of god and the perfection of the Law' with the Christian missionaries. (140) Religion and cultural tradition was the issue that Asian societies were least happy to compromise on. (141) Strangely, however, the personal religious conscience of the ambassador was far more freely tolerated in Asia than it was in Europe, where, for example, Philip II could in 1568 flatly refuse to allow the English ambassador in Madrid to hold Anglican services in his house, or where foreign Protestants on Madeira were refused the right of burial until the year 1770. (142)

STEFAN HALIKOWSKI-SMITH

UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA

(1) I would like to thank Timothy Coates of Charleston College for his reading and comments and Diego Ramada Curto of the EUI, Florence, for his 'invisible hand' and for stimulating my interest in the sociological dimensions of the Portuguese world.

(2) Blair B. Kling & M. N. Pearson, The Age of Partnership. Europeans in Asia before Domination (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1979); K. MacPherson, The Indian Ocean: a history of people and the sea (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), ch. 3 ('The Age of Commerce, 1450-1700'), or Anthony Reid, South East Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

(3) Amongst the best works of this historiographical moment are Stuart Schwartz ed., Implicit Understandings: observing, reporting and reflecting on the encounters between Europeans and other peoples in the early modern era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: the wonder of the New World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

(4) K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe: economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

(5) Pedro Soares Martinez, Historia Diplomatica de Portugal (Lisbon: Verbo, 1986), 102.

(6) Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Oxford: Cape, 1955); Manuel de Barros e Sousa, Visconde de Santarem, Quadro elementar das relacoes politicas e diplomaticas de Portugal com as diversas potencias do mundo, desde o principio da monarchia, 18 vols (Paris: J.P. Aillaud, 1842-76).

(7) The third mission at the Mughal court technically lasted from 1595-1773, though for Edward MacLagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mughal (London: Burns, Oates & Washburne, 1932) it was brought to an end in 1605. The first two missions were considerably shorter (1580-83 and 1591-92).

(8) M.S. Anderson, The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494-1618 (London: Longman, 1998), 52.

(9) Timothy Coates, 'Crime and Punishment in the 15th century Portuguese world. The transition from Internal to Imperial Exile', in The final argument : the imprint of violence on society in medieval and early modern Europe, eds. Donald J. Kagay, L.J. Andrew Villalon (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998); Fernandes's second of three journeys was recorded by Gaspar Veloso, clerk of the factory at Sofala, in a letter to the King (1533), Arquivos Nacionais do Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Cartas dos Vicereis 1-162, doc. III, 180-88.

(10) Gaspar da Cruz, Tractado em que se Cotam muito por Estenso as Cousas da China, co suas Particularidades, e assi do Reino dOrmuz (Evora, 1569). A more recent edition of this text can be found in Luis de Albuquerque ed., Primeiros escritos sobre a China (Lisbon: Alfa, 1989).

(11) The embassy is contained in a letter of Antonio Mendes of 9 May 1563 written after he had returned to Lisbon, and published by Antonio Brasio, Monumenta missionaria Africana (Lisbon: Agencia Geraldo Ultramar, 1952- ), II, 495-512.

(12) J. Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Diary of Thomas Pereira, 18 vols. (Rome: Institutum Historicum S. I., 1961).

(13) See Joao de Deus Ramos, 'As Relacoes Diplomaticas entre Portugal e a China na primeira metade do seculo XVIII', in A Diplomacia na Historia de Portugal. Actas do Coloquio (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da Historia, 1990).

(14) John Russell-Wood, A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia and America (Manchester: Carcanet, 1992).

(15) See J. Flores, Os Portugueses e o Mar do Ceilao. Trato, Diplomacia e Guerra (1498-1543), (Lisbon: Cosmos, 1998), pp. 138-44, 255 n. 76.

(16) For the ambassador's activities in Siam, see Maria da Conceicao Flores, 'A Embaixada de Pedro Vaz de Siqueira ao Siao em 1684', Anais de Historia de Alem-Mar 3 (2002), 353-75.

(17) J. Calvet de Magalhaes, 'A Accao Diplomatica no Pensamento dos Diplomatas Portugueses dos Seculos XVII e XVIII', A Diplomacia na Historia de Portugal, p.16.

(18) See Maria Barata, Rui Fernandes de Almada, diplomata portugues do seculo XVI, (Lisbon: n. pub., 1971); also, the letters of the Portuguese factor in Antwerp Rui Fernandez, who was sent to southern Germany (letter of 10 January, 1520, for example), repr. in Braamcamp Freire, Noticias da Feitoria de Flandres, doc. XLII, p.110 & doc. XXXIX. For some interesting recent research on Damiao de Gois's diplomatic activities in central Europe, see Franciszek Ziejka, 'Un humaniste portugais a Cracovie', in Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 49, no. 1-2 (2004), 99-102.

(19) E. Prestage, Domingos do Rosario. Diplomata e Politico (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1926).

(20) Rita Costa Gomes, A corte dos Reis de Portugal no Final da Idade Media (Lisbon: Difel, 1995), p. 121.

(21) E. Griseille, 'Un manuel du parfait diplomate au 16e siecle', Revue d'histoire diplomatique, 28 (1915), 775.

(22) 'Senhor--porque meus dessejos foy sempre morrer em cousas dacrecemtamento de vosso Real estado aceytey a embayxada', Letter of F. Gomes de Lemos to the King Dom Manuel, Cochin, 4 Jan. 1517, A.N.T.T., Corpo Cronologico, pte. 1, m. 21, doc. 4.

(23) H. Leitao, Os Portugueses em Solor e Timor de 1515 a 1702 (Lisbon: IAC, 1948), pp. 81-82.

(24) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao (Rio de Janeiro: Relogio d'Agua, 2001), vol. 1, ch. 14, p. 55. In line with Rebecca Catz's recent endorsement of the historical content of Pinto's account, and that of historians like Michael Smithies, who specialise on the areas of Asia Pinto describes, I have drawn extensively from the detail therein. R. Catz, The Travels of Mendes Pinto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1989); M. Smithies, 'The Siam of Mendes Pinto's Travels, Journal of the Siam Society, 85:2 (1997), 59-73. Biographical information concerning Coelho can be found in Luis Filipe Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor (Lisbon: Difel, 1994), p. 452, n. 120.

(25) According to Gaspar Correia, Fernandes was also 'good-natured and very well informed', Lendas da India, II (Lisbon, 1859), p. 262.

(26) Antonio da Silva Rego, 'Duarte Catanho: Espiao e Embaixador', Anais, s.2, 4 (1953), 123-40.

(27) See, for example, 'Dos muytos e~baixadores que vierao ao governador dos reys comarcaos de Malaca', Fernao Lopes de Castanheda, Historia do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos Portugueses (Coimbra, 1929), vol. III, ch. LXIII.

(28) Damiao de Goes, Legatio Magni indorum imperatoris Presbyteri Ioannis, ad Emanuelem Lusitanae Regem, Anno Domini MDXIIII (Antwerp, 1532). There is a rare English translation in Lambeth Palace The legacye or embassate of the great emperour of Inde Preste Iohn, vnto Emanuell kynge of Portugal (M.v.C.xiiii), trans. by John More (London: W. Rastell, 1533).

(29) M.S. Anderson, The Origins of the Modern European State System (London: Longmans, 1998), p. 54.

(30) The circumstances of this embassy are related in Joao de Barros, Da Asia (Lisbon: 1777-88), Decada II, livro X, cap. II; Correa, Lendas da India, t. II, cap. XLVIII and Braz de Albuquerque, Comentarios do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque (Coimbra, 1923), pte. IV, cap. XVII, XIX.

(31) Letter of Ruy de Brito to Afonso de Albuquerque, Malacca, January 6, 1514, in Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque: seguidas de documentos que as elucidam,ed. by Bulhao Pato (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1884), t. III.

(32) The embassy is described in the Commentarios do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque, t. III, caps. XXXV-XXXVI; Barros, Da Asia, dec. III, liv. II, caps. 4 & 5; Castanheda, descobrimento e conquista da India, livro III, cap. LXII.

(33) Flores, Os Portugueses e o Mar do Ceilao, pp. 123-24.

(34) These factors were: (1) Ancient line of royal predecessors, (2) Antiquity of the Christian line, (3) Extent of power, which should be absolute and independent and extend over both secular and spiritual spheres, (4) Eminence of the royal dignity, state and titles, Crown jewels and coats of arms, (5) Legendary figures as ancestors, (6) Absence of subjection to another power, (7) Precedent-setting judgements on the matter of precedence, (8) Prestigious orders of knighthood, (9) Martial and magnanimous progenitors who had accomplished great deeds, such as fighting for the Holy Land; (10) Subjects fit for both defensive and offensive warfare, military power. Howell, Proedria-basilike: A Discourse Concerning the Precedency of Kings: Wherein the Reasons and Arguments of the Three Greatest Monarchs of Christendom.. etc., (London, 1668), preamble.

(35) J. Rodrigues Tcuzzu, Historia da Igreja do Japao (Macao: 1954-56), vol. I, 350.

(36) Father Francisco Pimentel, S.J. Breve Relacao da Jornada que Fez a Corte de pekim o Senhor Maniel de Saldanha, Embaixador Extraordinario del Rey de Portugal ao Emperador da China, e Tartaria (1667-70), ed. C.R. Boxer (Macao, 1942), p. 15.

(37) According to the state-system designed by Friedrich von Gentz at the Congress of Vienna, the Great Powers would use diplomacy and collective meetings to avert international crisis, see S. Llewellyn Woodward, Prelude to Modern Europe, 1815-1914 (London: Methuen, 1972), pp. 51-54.

(38) Castanheda, descobrimento e conquista da India, vol. III, cap. IIII, 5.

(39) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, ch. 16.

(40) Bras de Albuquerque, Comentarios do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque (Lisbon: Publicacoes Alfa, 1989), pte. IV, cap. XX.

(41) Letter of Afonso de Albuquerque to the King, Cochin, August 20, 1512, Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, t. I, carta X. Abreu's mission is cited in Barros, Da Asia, Dec. II, Liv. V, cap. VI, 584.

(42) Letter of Afonso de Albuquerque to the King of Ormuz, September 22, 1515, in Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, t. I, Carta CI.

(43) Gil Simoes, 'Do caminho que fizeram e ho que fizeram os embaixadores que foram ao Xeque Ismael e o presente que lhe leuaram', published in Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, t. I, 391-99.

(44) 'A pedir-lhe que houvesse por bem mandar que alguns dos seus naturaes viessem povoar Malaca, como lhe ja mandara dizer, porque sua tencao era desterrar della todolos Mouros Malayos; e povoando-se dos seus, seria hum meio para se melhor communicarem com os Portuguezes em amor e paz e as cousas do commercio andariam em suas maos e nao dos Mouros', Barros, Da Asia, Decada III, Livro II, Capitulo IV.

(45) Arquivo Portugues Oriental, ed. by J.H. da Cunha Rivara (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992), vol. V, pp. 825-31.

(46) The 1516/18 Siamese-Portuguese treaty is mentioned by John Villiers ('Ayutthaya as a City of Commerce in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries', Review of Culture, 13/14, 59-67), and in a report quoted by Leonor de Seabra (Relacoes entre Macau e o Siao (Seculos XVIII-XIX), 1994, 17-18), but I was unable to locate it in the archives.

(47) 'De como fui al reino de Siam, acompanando una embaxada que el capitan de Malaca embiava en nombre de Su Magestade', in La Vida de Jacque de Coutre (c.1640), published as Andanzas Asiaticas, ed. by Eddy Stols, B. Teensma and J. Verberckmoes (Madrid: Historia 16, 1990), ch. VII..

(48) John Correia-Afonso, S.J. 'More about Akbar and the Jesuits', Indica 14:1, March 1977, 58; M.S Renick, 'Akbar's First Embassy to Goa: Its Diplomatic and Religious Aspects', Indica 7 (1970), 35, 43. M. Ricci, Opere Storiche, ed. Tacchi Venturi, vol. 2, 1913, pp. 4-6, letter of Jan. 18, 1580.

(49) 'Regimento para Francisco da Gama Cutrim de Magalhaes que vai por embaixador ao Rei do Siao, Goa, 3 de Agosto de 1646', Filmoteca Portuguesa Ultramarina, Livro dos Segredos, Book No. 1, ff. 83-84.

(50) See Sidi Reis, Mir'at ul-Memalik (Istanbul, 1897), p. 33.

(51) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, vol. 2, p. 595. Catz cites Georges Le Gentil, Les Portugais en Extreme Orient. Fernao Mendes Pinto, un precurseur de l'exotisme au XVIe siecle (Paris, 1947) and Antoine Cabaton, Java, Sumatra and the other islands of the Dutch East Indies (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1911) to endorse Pinto's account on this point, though Cabaton is dated and simply wrong on a number of important issues, such as assuming that Islam took root in Indonesia alongside Arabisation. Peter Carey & Vincent Houben, in their analysis of female roles in Javanese court society concentrate rather on the female fighting units (prajurit estri) and business relationships, 'Spirited Srikandhis and sly Sumbadras. The social, political and economic role of women at the central Javanese courts in the early 18th and early 19th centuries', in Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, Indonesian women in focus: past and present notions (Dordrecht: Foris, 1987), pp. 12-43.

(52) D. Bouhours, La vie de Saint Francois Xavier de la Campagnie de Jesus, apostre des Indes et du Japon, trans. by John Dryden, as The Life of St. Francis Xavier (London, 1688). The story was originally in Luis Frois, Historia de Japam (written 1549-64), though despite James Brodrick's approval of Frois as a 'careful writer' (Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552), (London: Burns & Oates, 1952), p. 410), Juan G. Ruiz de Medina has found quite a lot of factual inaccuracy in the account, 'Un Viaje de Xavier desde Hirado a Yamaguchi. Retoques a un antiguo relato, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 52: 104 (1983), 209-32.

(52) D. Bouhours, La vie de Saint Francois Xavier, 483.

(53) Georg Schurhammer, Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii aliaque eius scripta (Rome: 1944-45), vol. II, 117-19.

(54) 'Porque nao levava com que o pagasse, passava por homem a pe de algum homem nobre que no caminho se lhe oferecia, pelo que lhe era necessario, para poder passer a salvo, aturar o andar da valgadura daquele a quem acompanhava', Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, chap. 208, 730.

(55) Ines []upanov, Disputed Mission. Jesuit experiments and brahmanical knowledge in seventeenth century India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 204-06.

(56) Andrea Valignano, Historia del principio y progresso de la Compania de Jesus en las Indias orientales (1542-64), ed. Josef Wicki, Rome, 1943, 395.

(57) 'Fazer capaces os Japoes da Gloria y grandeza da ley Christiana, y da magestade dos Principes y Senhores q~ abracarao esta ley, y da grandeza y riqueza dos nossos Reynos y cidades', Regimento e instruicao do q~ ha di fazero Padre Nuno Roiz q~ agora vay por procurador a Roma, no. 13, 12 December 1583, Collegio de Goa.

(58) For a mandado of Afonso de Albuquerque to one of his ambassadors, see British Library, Additional MS. 20901, cap. 95; others are included in the published volume, Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque.

(60) See the Arras tapestry held in the Uffizi, Florence, made in the embassy's honour. Frances Yates, The Valois Tapestry, London 1959.

(61) Tenreiro's journey was published as the Itinerario de Antonio Tenrreyro, Coimbra 1565 and is reproduced in Antonio Baiao, Itinerarios da India a Portugal por terra (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1923). The quotation is from page 7 of the latter.

(62) Rita Costa Gomes, A corte dos Reis, p.199.

(63) From the diary of John Saris, in Samuel Purchas, Purchas, His Pilgrimes in Japan, ed. by Cyril Wild (Kobe: J.L. Thompson, 1939), pp. 148-49.

(64) Ronald Toby, 'The Indianness of Iberia and changing Japanese iconography of the Other', in Stuart Schwartz, Implicit Understanding: observing, reporting and reflecting on the encounters between Europeans and other peoples in the early modern era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 339.

(65) Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon: Codice 50-V-21.

(66) Tenreiro, Itinerario, cap. X, pp. 23-24.

(67) See, for example, Pedro Teixeira, Relaciones. . de un viage hecho por el mismo autor, cap. IIII 'Como me parti de Basora por el desierto. .' (Madrid: Miragnano Ediciones, 1994), p. 380. The original was published at Antwerp by H. Verdussen in 1610. For the 'purchase of leadership' arrangements, see Father Fernao Guerreiro's account of the voyage of Bento de Gois (1603-07). Unable to access his account in the extremely rare complete five-volume edition of the Relacao annual das cousas que fizeram os padres da Companhia de Jesus na India e Iapao (Evora / Lisbon, 1603-11), I have relied on a translation in Jahangir and the Jesuits, ed. by C.H. Payne (London: Routledge, 1930), p. 144.

(68) It was not clear in the European case whether diplomats should be supported by the host state.

(69) This happened, for example, to Ambassador Balthasar Perreira in 1523/4, as described by Tenreiro, cap. VI.

(70) See, for example, the list of presents carried by Fernam Gomes de Lemos to Xeque Ismael in 1515, according to an Instrumento of Afonso de Albuquerque, Ormuz, 5 May 1515, in Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, t. II, 149 & 150; 'Lista do sagoate q foy em companhia do senhor Embaixador pa sedar ao Emperador da China, emais mandarins do Governo de Cantao', Father Francisco Pimentel, S.J. Breve Relacao da Jornada que Fez a Corte de pekim o Senhor Maniel de Saldanha, Embaixador Extraordinario del Rey de Portugal ao Emperador da China, e Tartaria (1667-1670), ed. by C.R. Boxer (Macau: Imprensa Nacional), 1942, 15. Appendix 5.

(71) Alvaro Velho, Relacao da Viagem de Vasco da Gama (Lisbon: CNCDP, 1990), p. 62.

(72) 'Carta do Embaixador ao Padre Manuel dos Reis escrita de Cantao em 16 de Fevereiro de 1669', in Pimentel, Breve Relacao da Jornada, pp. 63-64.

(73) Luis Frois, S.J. Cartas que os padres e irmaos da Companhia de Jesus escreverao dos reynos de Iapao e China, 2 vols. (Evora, 1598), I, ff. 178v-179.

(74) There are considerable divergences in the accounts of Castanheda and Antonio Tenreiro on this point, but it was clear that 'do rey da terra nao foy muito bem agazalhado', Tenreiro, Itinerario, p. 11.

(75) Verdadeira Informacao, ed. by August Reis Machado (Lisbon: Agencia Geral das Colonias 1943), cap. 30, pp. 73-74.

(76) 'Lista do sagoate q foy em companhia do Senhor Embaxador pa sedar ao Emperador da China. .', Breve Relacao da Jornada que Fez a Corte de pekim o Senhor Maniel de Saldanha, App. 5.

(77) 'porque deixo que estes sao Mouros, deixo tambem os impedimentos que em semelhantes obras poem o demonio', Matteo Ricci, Opere Storiche, ed. Tacchi Venturi, vol. 2, 1913, letter of Jan. 18, 1580 to Padre Emanuele de Goes, S.I., 6.

(78) 'Do caminho que Gaspar Bocarro fez por terra da Cafraria, de Tete ate Quiloa, com a prata que Diogo Simoes Madeira mandava a Sua Magestade', Antonio Bocarro, Historia da India, Decada 13 (Lisbon: Typ. da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1876), pt. II, cap. CXLV, p. 599.

(79) Verdadeira Informacao, 'Das pecas que O Capitao mandou ao Preste Joao', Cap. V, pp. 17-19.

(80) Tomas Pereira (1645-1708), for example, assembled an organ during his mission in Peking, T. Borba and F.Lopes Graca, Dicionario de Musica, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1958), p. 362.

(81) Paes's account is translated and reproduced in Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India, repr. 1982, p. 251. The original ms. is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

(82) Giuliano Bertuccioli, 'A Lion in Peking: Ludovico Buglio and the Embassy to China of Bento Pereira de Faria in 1678', East and West, 26 (1-2) (1976), 223-40.

(83) Pimentel, Breve Relacao da Jornada, 22-23.

(84) Titsingh's MS. Report, f. 32-34, summarised in J.J.L. Duvyendak, 'The Last Dutch Embassy to the Chinese Court', in T'oung Pao, vol. XXXIV, Leiden: Brill, 1938, 57.

(85) Galeote Pereira, Algumas cousas sabidas da China, in Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1953, pp. 67-68.

(86) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, ch. 223, vol. 2, 801-02.

(87) [Vilela] 'levava huma loba aperta de chamelote, e huma capa d'asperges con Sabastos de borcado de Ormus, ainda que velha, e seo barrete', Luis Frois, Historia de Japam, ed. Jose Wicki (Lisbon, 1976-84), vol. 2, chap. 57, 13. The Jesuit Jean Crasset says that Vilela 'made a new sort of robe with large sleeves lined with Linsey Woolsey and edg'd with a golden fringe' and praises him, adding that all missionaries should imitate St Paul, for the apostle 'made himself all to all, and was not asham'd.. to work with his own Hands for a Livelyhood', The history of the church in Japan. Written originally in French by Monsieur L'Abbe de T. And now translated into English by N.N. (London: 1705-07), vol. 1, p. 255.

(88) 'Tao ricamente ornada, tao lustrozamente vestida e bem consertada de maneira que diziao que cada hum delles parecia que era hum fotoque, id est hum pagode que vinha do ceu'. . 'quando virao entrar pelo Miaco gente tam lustroza, que nunca desde o principio do Miaco athe entao virao outra tal, ficarao todos metendo dedo na boca sem poder fallar'. Frois, Historia de Japam, vol. 5, pp. 295-96.

(89) Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, Tratados / historicos, / politicos, ethicos, / y religiosos de la monarchia / de China : / descripcion breve / de aqvel imperio, y exemplos raros / de emperadores, y magistrados del. / con narracion difvsa de varios svcessos, / y cosas singvlares de otros reynos, / y diferentes navegaciones :/ anadense los decretos pontificios, / y proposiciones calificadas en Roma para la Mission / Chinica, y vna bula de N.M.S.P. Clemente X. en fauor de los / missionarios / Por el P. maestro Fr. Domingo Fernandez Navarrete [...] Missionario Apostolico de la gran China, Prelado de los de su Mission [...], I, Trat. 6, cap. XIV, pp. 351-52.

(90) 'E me levou com grande estrondo de atabaques e sinos e grita da chusma', vol. 1, ch. 15, 57.

(91) 'O pateo estaua cheo de gente armada, que pareciao dez mil', G. Correia, Lendas, t. II, cap. XLVIII.

(92) John Wills Jr., Embassies and Illusions, 119; O. Krauske, Die Entwicklung der standigen Diplomatie vom 15 zu den Beschlussen von 1815 und 1818 (Leipzig, 1885).

(93) 'Tua vinda, homem de Malaca, a esta terra de el-rei meu senhor, e tao agradavel a sua vontade como a chuva em tempo seco na lavoura dos nossos arrozes. Entra seguro como vos outros e assim esperamos nele que seja ate ao derradeiro bocejo do mundo'.

(94) Comentarios do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1923), ch. 27; Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, vol. I, 58.

(95) A. Petitot and L. Monnerque eds., 'Memoires du comte de Forbin', in Collection des memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France (Paris: 1829), vol. 74, pp. 329-45.

(96) Dejanirah Couto, 'The Linguas in the Portuguese Empires--16th Century', Electronic Journal of Portuguese History, vol. 1, no. 2. Portuguese linguas seem later to have found ready employment with the Dutch in the East as accounts demonstrate, J. J. L. Duvyendak, 'The Last Dutch Embassy to the Chinese Court', in T'oung Pao, 34 (1938), 57.

(97) Jonathan Spence, Emperor of China. Self Portrait of K'ang-hsi (London: Cape, 1994), p. 78.

(98) See the account of the Jesuit Luis Mariano, 'Relacao da Jornada e Descobrimento da Ilha de Sao Lourenco que o Vice-Rei da India D. Jeronymo de Azevedo Mandou Fazer por Paulo Rodrigues da Costa, Capitao e Descobridor', in, Os Dois Descobrimentos da Ilha de Sao Lourenco mandados fazer pelo vice rei D. Jeronimo de Azevedo nos anos de 1613 a 1616, ed. by Humberto Leitao (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Historicos Ultramarinos, 1970), p. 210.

(99) G. Correia, 'Lenda do Quarto Gouernador da India, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira', Lendas da India, Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 1860, t. II, cap. XIII, 624-25. A further anonymous account entitled 'Lembranca dalgumas coussas que se passaram quando Antonio de Bryto e Dyogo Pereyra foram a Bengalla asy em Bengala como em Tanacaiym em Pegu onde tambem fomos' was published by Ronald Bishop Smith, The First Age of the Portuguese embassies, navigations and peregrinations to the ancient kingdoms of Cambay and Bengal, 1500-1521 (Bethesda: Decatur Press, 1969), ch. II, sec. 6.

(100) G. Bouchon, 'L'interprete portugais en Inde au debut du XVIe siecle', Simposio Interdisciplinar de Estudos Portugueses. As Dimensoes da Alteridade nas Culturas de Lingua Portuguesa--o Outro, II (Lisbon, 1985), p. 205.

(101) For Noronha, see Tenreiro in Baiao, Itinerarios, cap. II, 7; for Gaspar da Gama, Stefania Elena Carnemolla, 'Un certo Gaspar da Gama: la sfuggente figura di un interprete dei viaggatori portoghesi del cinquecento', L'Erasmo, 16, (July-August 2003).

(102) Gaspar Correia, Lendas da India, II/I, cap.X: 71/72. For the embassy to Gaur, see G. Bouchon and L. Filipe Thomaz,Voyage dans le Delta du Gange et de l'Irraouady, 1521 (Paris: Centre Culturel Portugais, 1988), p. 241.

(103) Letter of January 7, 1594, brought by Portuguese merchant Pero Goncales Caruajal to the Governor of the Philippines, repr. in Archivo Ibero-Americano, 4 (1915), 407.

(104) Narrative of Domingo Paes (probably writt. 1520-22), in The Vijayanagar Empire. Domingos Paes and Fernao Nuniz, ed. by Vasundhara Filliozat, trans. by Robert Sewell (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1977), p. 29.

(105) 'Muito grande, e poderoso senhor antre os mouros Xeque Ismael', Additional MS 20901, British Museum, cap. 95. There is also a copy of this letter published in Comentarios do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1923), p. 355.

(106) Copy of an imperial letter sent to Dom Joao III, dated the first decade of A.H. Shahban (AD 18-27 October 1544), published in Portuguese Studies, 6, (1990). Suleyman liked reciprocally to be addressed as 'the excellent padishah, refuge of the world' (alem penah), see Sidi Reis, Mir'at ul-Memalik (Istanbul, 1897), p. 34.

(107) C.O. Blagden, 'Two Malay Letters from Ternate in the Moluccas, written in 1521 and 1522', Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, 6 (1) (1930), 87-101.

(108) 'Cobicoso mas que todos os homens do service do leao coroado no trono espantoso das aguas do mar, assentado por poderio incrivel no assopro de todos os ventos, Principe rico do grande Portugal teu senhor e meu.. eu, Angeesiry Timorraja, rei dos Batas. .', Peregrinacao, vol. I, 58. For the court society of the Kraton, see J.M. Gullick, Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya (London: Athlone Press, 1958) and Benedict Anderson, 'The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture', in Culture and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Claire Holt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 5-22.

(109) Joel C. Kuipers, 'Batak', in Indonesia: a Country Study, ed. by W. H. Frederick, in R. L. Worden (Washington D.C.: Federal Research Division, 1993).

(110) See Reid, 'The Land Below the Winds'.

(111) Peregrinacao, ch. 15.

(112) From a panel in Turks. A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600, an exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, 22 January--12 April 2005.

(113) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao (Mem Martins: Publicacoes Europa-America, 1995), vol. 1, p. 53.

(114) See for example Robert Kribb, Historical Dictionary of Indonesia (Metuchen, N.J., 1992), p. 48; P. Roo de la Faille, 'Mendez Pinto op Sumatra'. In Historische curiositeiten uit Malajve en Java, 7-12 (1954).

(115) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, vol. 1, 54; Francisco Alvarez, Verdadeira Informacao das terras do Preste Joao das Indias, facs. edition of that of 1540 (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1889), 69-84

(116) Soares Martinez, Historia Diplomatica de Portugal, p. 102.

(117) Barros, Da Asia, Decada III, liv. III, cap. 1, III & IV; Castanheda, descobrimento e conquista da India, liv. V, cap. III, X, XII, XXXV.

(118) Barros, Da Asia, Decada III, Livro II, Capitulo IV.

(119) 'Da terra do cabo do mundo, de nome Chenchicogim, onde por poderio de armas grossas e exercitos de gentes de diversas nacoes, reina o leao coroado do grande Portugal', Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, vol. 2, ch. 225, 810.

(120) Francisco Alvarez, Verdadeira Informacao, 74-79.

(121) Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, vol. 2, 806.

(122) Gaspar Correia, Lendas da India, ed. by R.J. de Lima Felner, vol. II (Lisbon: Typ. da Academia Real das Sciencas, 1859), p. 262.

(123) 'Of the journey of father Balthasar Barreira to this province, and particularly to the Kingdom of Bena', in Manuel Alvares, Ethiopia Minor and a geographical account of the province of Sierra Leone (ca. 1615), (Liverpool 1990), Online version at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Africana. Alvares01.

(124) The best account of Covilha's mission is still that of the Conde de Ficalho, Viagens de Pedro da Covilhan (Lisbon: A. M. Pereira, 1898).

(125) T. Severin, 'In Search of Prester John', Horizon 1973, 15(3), 12-25; cf. Robert Knox, An historical relation of the island Ceylon, in the East-Indies. ., London 1681.

(126) 'ElRey, desejoso que Miguel Ferreira dormisse com molher de que lhe podia ficar filho ou filha', Correia, Lendas, t. II, cap. XLVIII, Lisbon: 1860, 415.

(127) 'From a Letter of Francesco Cabral, Portuguese, from Macao on December 8, 1584', M. Howard Rienstra, Jesuit Letters from China, 1583-4, Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1986, 26.

(128) Domingo Paes in Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1982 ed., 252. The original MS. is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

(129) See, for example, the letter of Pero Vaz da Caminha repr. in William B. Greenlee ed., The voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India (London: Hakluyt, 1938), p.9; see also the caps Fernao Peres de Andrade distributed on his embassy to Annan, Barros, Da Asia, Decada III, Livro II, Capitulo VI.

(130) 'Que enquanto o sol nao discrepar do efeito para que Deus o criou, nem a agua do mar deixar de subir e descer pelas praias da terra', Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, vol. II, ch. 225, p. 810.

(131) See Jorge Manuel dos Santos Alves, 'Natureza do Primeiro Ciclo de Diplomacia Luso-Chinesa (seculos XVI-XVIII)', in Estudos de Historia do Relacionamento Luso-Chines. Seculos XVI-XIX, ed. by A.V. de Saldanha and J.M. dos Santos Alves (Macau, Instituto Portugues do Oriente, 1996).

(132) Francois Valentijn, 'Byzondere Zaaken over Japan', in Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, Amsterdam: 1862, Deel V, 88-89; more generally C.R. Boxer, A Portuguese Embassy to Japan (1644-47) (London: Kegan Paul, 1928).

(133) B. Picard, Das Gesandschaftswesen ostmitteleuropas in der fruhen Zeit (Graz/Wien/Koln, 1967), 107.

(134) Castanheda, descobrimento e conquista da India, Livro VI, cap. XLVII. In narrow streets close to the King of Lar's palace 'sayolhe hum corpo de mouros ao encotro, & hum mouro lhe deu com ha porra de ferro na cabeca co que o deitou muytou ferido do caualo abaixo. E nisto forao as pedradas tantas das ganelas & as frechadas & zagchadas, que por pouco que os nossos nao forao mortos & todos fugirao por ode melho poderao', descobrimento e conquista da India, Liv. VI, cap. XLVI, XLVII.

(135) D. de Gois, Cronica do Felicissimo Rei D. Manuel (Coimbra: Imp. Da Universidade, 1926), pte. III, cap. IIII; pte. IV, cap. IX; 'Informacao das Cousas de Maluco', in Colleccao de Noticias para a Historia e Geografia das Nacoes Ultramarinas, t. VI (Lisbon, 1856).

(136) Please note that other circumstantial accounts such as a report given by the traveler Fernao Mendes Pinto suggest he was liberated (as the Portuguese historian Luis de Albuquerque has maintained). Some accounts hold that he remained in China until his death in 1540 rather than the date of 1524. For a brief survey of these developments, see Stefan Halikowski Smith, 'Tome Pires', Great Lives from History, 1451-1600 (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2005).

(137) Javanese slaves killed Simao Martins, as related by Castanheda, descobrimento e conquista da India, Liv. III, cap. LXXVIII.

(138) Salih Ozbaran, 'Two Letters of Dom Alvaro de Noronha from Hormuz. Turkish Activities along the coast of Arabia, 1550-1552', The Ottoman Response to European Expansion (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1994), pp. 159-78.

(139) R.P. Mathee would concur from his recent The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

(140) 'porque gostava muito de falar das grandezas de Deus e da perfeicao da sua lei', Mendes Pinto, Peregrinacao, chs. 225, 358.

(141) See, for example, Charles F. Keyes, 'Why the Thai are not Christians: Buddhist and Christian conversion in Thailand', in Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, edited by Robert W. Hefner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 259-85.

(142) As mentioned by William Combe, A History of Madeira (London: Ackerman, 1821), 46.