Fernao Mendes Pinto

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Fernao Mendes Pinto 7: A Traveller's Guide to Ming China - Script

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Pinto's story continues, and the Portuguese traveller makes his way across China as a prisoner, describing some its towns, cities, and countryside as he goes. His China, which he may not have actually visited himself, is dotted with the remnants of previous Portuguese actions, an envoy's gravestone and the remnants of failed embassies.

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Fernao Mendes Pinto 5: Revenge and a Little Piracy Too

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Pinto and his colleagues embark on a quest for revenge against a certain pirate, and in the process indulge in quite a bit of piracy themselves along the coasts of Champa and Hainan. Ships are seized, silks are stolen, and brains are squeezed out.

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Fernao Mendes Pinto 3: Melaka and the Embarrassed Envoy

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Our 16th-century traveller, among so many other things, arrives in Malacca (Melaka). From there he is sent out as envoy, leading to misadventure, near death, and criticism of the Portuguese Empire.

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Fernao Mendes Pinto 2: The Red Sea and the Siege of Diu

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Pinto visits the "Land of Prester John," faces trouble on the Red Sea, and brushes up against the 1538 Siege of Diu. He takes part in combat along the Indian coast, grumbles as to his lot in life, and is whisked about by boat to Massawa, Mokha, Qeshm, Chaul, Goa, Honnavar, and Diu, before heading further east.

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Fernao Mendes Pinto 1: From Lisbon, Poverty, and Pirates

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Fernão Mendes Pinto, respected by many of his contemporaries for the expertise knowledge which he'd gained through his travels, absolutely synonymous for others with lies and exaggerations. 

From humble beginnings and vaguely unfortunate events in his early life, Pinto would find a place for himself in the 16th-century world of colonial Portugal, would write himself into it if necessary.

He was, he said, “13 times a prisoner and 17 a slave.” As Rebecca Catz writes, he served as a “soldier, merchant, pirate, ambassador, missionary, doctor—the list is not complete.” He ran afoul of pirates, was shipwrecked, and robbed royal tombs. The characters in his story included a saint, an Indonesian ruler, the mother of Prester John, a Japanese lord, and someone who may or may not have been the Dalai Lama. He claimed to be among the very first Europeans to set foot in Japan, but then he claimed to be a lot of things.