Tomé Pires

Who is Tomé Pires?

Tomé Pires was a Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in South East Asia. After his arduous experiences in India and the East Indies, he headed the first official embassy from a European nation in China, where he died.

Pires was apothecary to the ill-fated Afonso, Prince of Portugal, son of King John II of Portugal. 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". In Malacca and Cochin he avidly collected and documented information from the Malay-Indonesia area, and personally visited Java, Sumatra and Maluku.