Ayutthaya, having subdued Sukhothai and other small…

Ayutthaya, having subdued Sukhothai and other small kingdoms in the latter half of the fourteenth century, has become a regional center of wealth and power.

Ayutthayan King Ramathibodi II had in 1500 sent the Siamese armies to subjugate the Sultanate of Malacca.

Though unable to conquer Malacca, Siam had managed to exact tributes from the Malacca sultanate and other sultanates like Pattani, Pahang, and Kelantan.

After the Portuguese, under Viceroy Alfonso d’Albuquerque, capture Malacca in 1511, Albuquerque, knowing of Siamese ambitions towards the Malay lands, sends Duarte Fernandez on a diplomatic mission to Ayutthaya, which claims rights over Malacca.

Fernandez, a tailor, had gone 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, Fernandez had been among nineteen Portuguese who stood arrested in Malacca, together with Rui de Araújo, having gathered knowledge about the culture of the region.

Traveling in a Chinese junk returning home, Fernandez is the first European to arrive here, establishing amicable relations between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Siam, returning with a Siamese envoy with gifts and letters to Albuquerque and the king of Portugal.