Galeote Pereira
Pereira and other Portuguese mercenaries helped defend the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom against the invading army of King Tabinshwehti of Pegu in the Burmese–Siamese War (1548–49), introducing Early Modern warfare to the region.
Pereira engaged in smuggling along the Ming Empire's South China Sea coast, for which enterprise one notorious centre was the Taishan islet of Wuyu in Xiamen Bay.
He was aboard one of the two Portuguese junks seized in March 1549 near the Dongshan Peninsula during the Pirate Extermination Campaign of the Jiajing Emperor, which was actively carried out by Fujian's grand coordinator Zhu Wan.
[5] A complete English translation of the original (i.e., the earliest known to us) Portuguese manuscript was made by Boxer and published in 1953 in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, vol.
[10] This shows that Pereira (or his early Jesuit editors) were not in possession of the information that the Lisbon historian João de Barros had when writing the Third of his Décadas da Ásia (published 1563, but written much earlier), which correctly lists all fifteen provinces.
[11] He then proceeds with a brief description of Chinese cities whose "streets are wonderful to behold" and which are decorated with numerous "arches of triumph",[12] and of the densely populated and intensively farmed countryside.
Ten stripes draws a great deal of blood, twenty or thirty spoil the flesh altogether, fifty or threescore will require a long time to be healed, and if they come to the number of one hundred, then they are incurable—and they are given to whosoever hath nothing wherewith to bribe these executioners who administer them.
The malign accusations of two local worthies, apparently their erstwhile partners, were not enough to see the Portuguese smugglers scapegoated : For wheresoever in any town of Christendom should be accused unknown men as we were, I know not what end the very Innocents' cause would have; but we in a heathen country, having for our enemies two of the chiefest men in a whole town, wanting an interpreter, ignorant of that country's language, did in the end see our great adversaries cast into prison for our sake, and deprived of their offices and honour for not doing justice—yea, not to escape death, for as rumour goeth, they shall be beheaded.
[23] He did realize at least that there are several types of temples, and the divinity worshiped in some of them is referred to as Omithofom (Āmítuó Fó)[23] Pereira deems the Fujian Muslims to be almost entirely assimilated into the Chinese mainstream.
He thinks, however, "that will no longer endure", because while the older generation is still observant and remembers of its old homeland in Çamarquão (Samarkand), "their posterity is so confused, that they have nothing of a Moor in them but abstinence from swine's flesh, and yet many of them do eat thereof privately".
According to Boxer's estimate, about one-third of Galeote Pereira's account was later incorporated in Gaspar da Cruz's A Treatise of China, the first China-specific book published in Europe (1569).
Although the character is named Fernando De Gama he is known as a Portuguese soldier of fortune helping to defend the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom where the film is based.
