Islam enters the region of Indonesia along maritime trade routes in the fifteenth century.

(In less than a century, it will become the predominant religion of the archipelago.)

Ayutthayan king Ramathibodi II sends the Siamese armies to subjugate …

…the Sultanate of Malacca in 1500.

The Siamese kingdom is unable to conquer Malacca, but it manages to exact tributes from the Malacca sultanate and …

… others, including Pattani, …

…Pahang, and …

…Kelantan.

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.

Pattani, the center of the semi-independent Malay Sultanate of Pattani Darul Makrif, has historically paid tribute to the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya.

With the fall of Ayutthaya to the Burmese in 1569, Pattani had become virtually independent, and even after the restoration of Ayutthayan independence in 1600, remains so.

Chinese merchants, beginning with Cheng Ho in the period 1406-1433, had played a major role in the rise of Pattani as a regional trade center.

The Chinese over the next two centuries had been joined by other groups such as the Portuguese in 1516, the Japanese in 1592, the Dutch VOC in 1602, the English East India Company in 1612, as well as a great number of Malay and Siamese merchants who work throughout the area.

The VOC and the English East India Company have established warehouses in Pattani in 1603 and 1612, respectively, and conduct out intense trading here.

Pattani is particularly viewed by European traders as a way of accessing the Chinese market.