Duarte Fernandes

Duarte Fernandes (16th century) was a Portuguese diplomat, explorer, and was the first European to establish diplomatic relations with Thailand, when in 1511 he led a diplomatic mission to Ayutthaya Kingdom (Kingdom of Siam), after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca.
Duarte Fernandes was a tailor who traveled to Malacca in the first expedition of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in September 1509. In the sequence of a failed plot to destroy the expedition, he was among nineteen Portuguese that stood arrested in Malacca. His amicable nature spared him the fate of the other conspirators. Together with Rui de Araújo, Fernandes gathered knowledge about the culture of the region and became a de facto envoy of Afonso de Albuquerque.
In 1511, soon after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca, knowing of Siamese ambitions over Malay, Albuquerque immediately sent him in a diplomatic mission to the court of the King of Siam Ramathibodi II,. Fernandes was dispatched, and he became the first European to arrive in Siam, where he was successful in establishing amicable relations between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Siam, returning with a Siamese envoy bearing gifts and letters to Albuquerque and the king of Portugal. Five years after that initial contact, Ayutthaya and Portugal concluded a treaty granting the Portuguese permission to trade in the kingdom.
Fernandes became one of the first Europeans to take an interest in Chinese shipbuilding, as he traveled in a Chinese junk on his return journey to Malacca and, being a former tailor, was fascinated by the junk's sails.