HOME





Rafael Perestrello
Rafael Perestrello ( fl. 1514–1517) was a Portuguese explorer and a cousin of Filipa Moniz Perestrello, the wife of explorer Christopher Columbus.Brook, 124. He is best known for landing on the southern shores of mainland China in 1516 and 1517 to trade in Guangzhou (then romanized as "Canton"), after the Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares landed on Lintin Island within the Pearl River estuary in May 1513. Rafael also served as a trader and naval ship captain for the Portuguese in Sumatra and Portuguese-conquered Malacca. João de Barros (1496–1570) wrote that Rafael Perestrello almost became lost while sailing by the Andaman Islands, but ventured safely through territory that was rumored to be inhabited by native cannibals.Dion, 162. Family background Filippo Perestrello (also known as Filippone Pallastrelli), Rafael's great-grandfather and son of Gabriele Palastrelli and wife ''Madama'' Bertolina, was a nobleman from the Italian city of Piacenza who moved w ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Kingdom Of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal was a Portuguese monarchy, monarchy in the western Iberian Peninsula and the predecessor of the modern Portuguese Republic. Existing to various extents between 1139 and 1910, it was also known as the Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves after 1415, and as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves between 1815 and 1822. The name is also often applied to the Portuguese Empire, the realm's overseas colonies. The nucleus of the Portuguese state was the County of Portugal, established in the 9th century as part of the ''Reconquista'', by Vímara Peres, a vassal of the Kingdom of Asturias, King of Asturias. The county became part of the Kingdom of León in 1097, and the Counts of Portugal established themselves as rulers of an independent kingdom in the 12th century, following the battle of São Mamede. The kingdom was ruled by the Portuguese House of Burgundy, Afonsine Dynasty until the 1383–85 Crisis, after which the monarchy passed to the Hous ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Porto
Porto (), also known in English language, English as Oporto, is the List of cities in Portugal, second largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon. It is the capital of the Porto District and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire concelho, municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropolitan area, with an estimated population of just 248,769 people in a municipality with only . Porto's urban area has around 1,319,151 people (2025) in an area of ,Demographia: World Urban Areas
, March 2010
making it the second-largest urban area in Portugal. It is recognized as a global city with a Gamma + rating from the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Located along the Douro River estuary in northern Portugal, Porto is one of the oldest European centers and ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Manuel I Of Portugal
Manuel I (; 31 May 146913 December 1521), known as the Fortunate (), was King of Portugal from 1495 to 1521. A member of the House of Aviz, Manuel was Duke of Beja and Viseu prior to succeeding his cousin, John II of Portugal, as monarch. Manuel ruled over a period of intensive expansion of the Portuguese Empire owing to the numerous Portuguese discoveries made during his reign. His sponsorship of Vasco da Gama led to the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, resulting in the creation of the Portuguese India Armadas, which guaranteed Portugal's monopoly on the spice trade. Manuel began the Portuguese colonization of the Americas and Portuguese India, and oversaw the establishment of a vast trade empire across Africa and Asia. Manuel established the Casa da Índia, a royal institution that managed Portugal's monopolies and its imperial expansion. He financed numerous famed Portuguese navigators, including Pedro Álvares Cabral (who discovered Brazil), ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Tomé Pires
Tomé Pires (c. 1468 — c. 1524/1540) was a Portuguese apothecary, colonial administrator, and diplomat. In 1510 he was commissioned by the Portuguese court to serve as a " factor of drugs" in India, arriving at Cannanore in 1511. In 1512 he was sent to the port city of Malacca, recently captured by the Portuguese. There he served as the chief accountant for the royal factory. Upon his return to India in 1515, Pires was sent to China as ambassador from the King of Portugal to the Ming Court. His mission failed when the Chinese court refused to recognize him because of the increasingly hostile activities of Portuguese traders in the region. Pires never left China; he was either executed by the Chinese in 1524 or possibly banished for life to a remote Chinese province. During his stay in Malacca, Pires wrote the ''Suma Oriental'', a landmark description of the geography, ethnography and commerce of the Asian coastline stretching from the Red Sea to Japan. The manuscript is an imp ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bengal
Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Bengal proper is divided between the modern-day sovereign nation of Bangladesh and the States and union territories of India, Indian states of West Bengal, and Karimganj district of Assam. The ancient Vanga Kingdom is widely regarded as the namesake of the Bengal region. The Bengali calendar dates back to the reign of Shashanka in the 7th century CE. The Pala Empire was founded in Bengal during the 8th century. The Sena dynasty and Deva dynasty ruled between the 11th and 13th centuries. By the 14th century, Bengal was absorbed by Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent. An independent Bengal Sultanate was formed and became the eastern frontier of the Islamic world. During this period, Bengal's rule and influence spread to Assam, Arakan, Tri ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Fernão Pires De Andrade
Fernão Pires de Andrade (also spelled as Fernão Peres de Andrade; in contemporary sources, Fernam (Fernã) Perez Dandrade) (d. 1552) was a Portuguese merchant, pharmacist, and diplomat who worked under the explorer and colonial administrator Afonso de Albuquerque. His encounter with Ming China in 1517—after initial contacts by Jorge Álvares and Rafael Perestrello in 1513 and 1516, respectively—marked the resumption of direct European commercial and diplomatic contact with China. (Even though there were Europeans in Medieval China, notably Marco Polo, that period of contact had been interrupted by the fall of the Yuan dynasty.) Although de Andrade's mission was initially a success that allowed a Portuguese embassy to proceed all the way to Beijing, relations were soon spoiled by culminating events that led to an extremely negative impression of the Portuguese in China. This included acts of his brother Simão that enraged the Chinese, false reports of the Portuguese being c ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Junk (ship)
A junk () is a type of China, Chinese sailing ship characterized by a central rudder, an overhanging flat Transom (nautical), transom, watertight Bulkhead (partition), bulkheads, and a flat-bottomed design. They are also characteristically built using iron nails and clamps. The term applies to many types of small coastal or river ships, usually serving as cargo ships, pleasure boats, or houseboats, but also going up in size up to large ocean-going vessels. There can be significant regional variations in the type of rig and the layout of the vessel. Chinese junks were originally only fluvial and had square sails, but by the Song dynasty (), they adopted ocean-going technologies acquired from Southeast Asian ''k'un-lun po'' trade ships. Tanja sails and fully-battened junk rigs were introduced to Chinese junks by the 12th century CE. Similar designs to the Chinese junk were also adopted by other East Asian countries, most notably Japan, where junks were used as merchant ships to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula and East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Peninsular Malaysia shares land and maritime Malaysia–Thailand border, borders with Thailand, as well as maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia; East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the country's national capital, List of cities and towns in Malaysia by population, largest city, and the seat of the Parliament of Malaysia, legislative branch of the Government of Malaysia, federal government, while Putrajaya is the federal administrative capi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Zhengde Emperor
The Zhengde Emperor (26 October 149120 April 1521), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Wuzong of Ming, personal name Zhu Houzhao, was the 11th List of emperors of the Ming dynasty, emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigning from 1505 to 1521. He succeeded his father, the Hongzhi Emperor. The Zhengde Emperor was the eldest and only surviving son of the Hongzhi Emperor. As the crown prince, he received a Confucian education and was known for his intelligence during his studies. However, upon taking power, it became evident that he had a strong aversion to the Confucian-oriented bureaucracy and rejected the rituals and duties associated with it. He frequently clashed with ministers and grand secretaries, instead relying on eunuchs, particularly the "Eight Tigers", with whom he had grown up. From 1506 to 1510, the eunuch Liu Jin effectively controlled the government, appointing his allies and supporters to important positions. The emperor even moved out of the Forbidden City t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ming Dynasty
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump state, rump regimes ruled by remnants of the House of Zhu, Ming imperial family, collectively called the Southern Ming, survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the naval history of China, navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. H ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Portuguese India
The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital of Portuguese India served as the governing centre of a string of military forts and maritime ports scattered along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. The first viceroy Francisco de Almeida established his base of operations at Fort Manuel in the Malabar region, after the Kingdom of Cochin negotiated to become a protectorate of Portugal in 1505. With the Portuguese conquest of Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate in 1510, Goa became the major anchorage for the Armadas arriving in India. The capital of the viceroyalty was transferred from Cochin to Goa in 1530. From 1535, Mumbai (Bombay) was a harbour of Portuguese India, known as '' Bom Bahia'', until it was handed over, through the Marriage Treaty, dowry o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Afonso De Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque, 1st Duke of Goa ( – 16 December 1515), was a Portuguese general, admiral, statesman and ''conquistador''. He served as viceroy of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, during which he expanded Portuguese influence across the Indian Ocean and built a reputation as a fierce and skilled military commander. Albuquerque advanced the three-fold Portuguese grand scheme of combating Islam, spreading Christianity, and securing the trade of spices by establishing a Portuguese Asian empire. Among his achievements, Albuquerque managed to conquer Goa and was the first European of the Renaissance to raid the Persian Gulf, and he led the first voyage by a European fleet into the Red Sea. He is generally considered a highly effective military commander, and "probably the greatest naval commander of the age", given his successful strategy of attempting to close all the Indian Ocean naval passages to the Atlantic, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and to the Pacific, transforming it ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]