Tomé Pires

Tomé Pires, often de Tomé Pires, (* around 1468 in Lisbon, Portugal, † 1540 in Sampitay, Jiangsu Province, China) was a Portuguese chemist and pharmacologist, diplomat and writer.

He was the first European ambassador to the Chinese imperial court. With his only book, he created a work that was, and one of the first of a European with descriptions of the Moluccas and the Spice Islands, the first literary over the Far East of a Portuguese.

Life and work

Many data from the life of Pires are not backed up. But what we know for sure is that he was born as the son of a pharmacist State of King John II of Portugal. He pursued a career of his father and pharmacist was the heir apparent, Prince Afonso ( 1475-1491 ).

From 1511 he was feitor the Drogas (chief pharmacist of the city) in Cochin. Then he took between 1512 to 1515 participated in a large trading expedition to the Spice Islands, the Moluccas, Sumatra and Java, where he worked as a clerk and book age and allowed him the possibility of exploration of exotic plants in his original profession pharmacist. After this trip, he wanted to return to Portugal, but instead landed in Goa, where he was again sent back to Malacca. From the local governor, he was again - Viceroy - with commissioned on behalf of a mission to China, which he took up in 1517. He should be the first official, permanent ambassador or envoy of Portugal at the Chinese imperial court. In fact, he came to the court of Emperor Zhengde, who came from the dynasty of Ming. But his activities as an envoy, he could only fill short.

A Portuguese privateers operating on the coast of China on the loose and the Messenger was, together with his staff held responsible arrested, tortured and imprisoned for many years. Many of his personal employees of small legation died under torture and in Portugal we also went out of the death of diplomats. But after listening to many years nothing more of him, he was finally released, allowed China but never leave. He was exiled in the north of China, in the province of Kiangsu (now Jiangsu), where he married a Chinese woman, with whom he had a daughter who became wealthy and lived peacefully with his wife twenty-seven years. The exemplary Catholic faith, which the family lived, almost brought the whole church to be baptized also Catholic. Pires died about 1540 there with well over 70 years. Some years after his death came the famous sailor and writer Fernao Mendes Pinto to the coast, as a prisoner. He later reported in his work " Peregrinacam " about the encounter with the ancient wife and the wife of Tome Pires de, in whose house he lives a good five days. Thus the fate of Pires is clarified.

Pires book

The book by Pires Suma Orientalis was about 1512-1515 during its major trading expedition, in which he participated as an accountant. The book contains geographical, anthropological and pharmaceutical reports and research to those visited by Pires places in Malacca, Sumatra, Java, Moluccas and the Spice Islands. It is the first book on the Far East, that comes from the pen of a Portuguese. It is also still one of the most important, that the islands accurately describes the Indonesian cultural area, from this time. The book was lost until 1944 in the National Library in Paris, and was only found again. In the same year it was also translated into English.

Präger of the term Cochinchina

Tomé Pires also applies to today as the official peen of the term " Cochinchina ", by Cauchy China that he had heard in 1515 from his stay in Malacca from Malay and was included in his book. The region of present-day Vietnam and parts of Cambodia was meant. The term was used worldwide until the 20th century for the region.

Präger the word Timor as a term for the Moluccas

As Timor called in his work back then Pires the entire islands and archipelagos that lay east of Java, in the language of the locals, as Timur means east. The islands are now known as the Little Sunda Islands and Moluccas. The latter also spice islands. Timor is the name of the largest island of the Lesser Sunda Islands.

Documents

• Http://www.bpedia.org/T_0190.php
• Http://www.summagallicana.it/lessico/P/Pires % 20Tome.htm
• Http://www.lucaandaro.blogspot.de/2004/06/tom-pires-not-ficcione.html