António de Faria
Portuguese navigator
António de Faria was a 16th-century Portuguese explorer and privateer. He was the first European to encounter the Mekong River of Southeast Asia in 1540. He anchored in Da Nang in 1535 and later tried to establish a major trading centre at the port village of Fai-Fo (current day Hội An, Vietnam).
Biography
Born in Campo de Coimbra, Alqueidão marshland, in Figueira da Foz, near Montemor-o-Velho.
Leaving for India, he went to seek his fortune in the Far East, exploring above all the coasts of China, more as a pirate than as an explorer, a privateer of the eastern seas, gaining a reputation as fearsome and terrible. He roamed Malacca as a ship's captain.
In 1535, Captain António de Faria was the first European (Portuguese) who, departing from Da Nang (later known as Tourane), where the Portuguese had landed in 1516, in what was then called Cochinchina (now Vietnam), established, or tried to establish, a trading post in the coastal city of Faifo, about 20 kilometers from present-day Da Nang. It was hoped that António de Faria would be able to create a permanent Portuguese enclave such as those at Macau and Goa; however, this attempt failed, as the trading post never flourished. He was also responsible for a misunderstanding of the name for Vietnam, calling the region "Cauchi", a name derived from the Chinese characters for Vietnam: Giao Chi. To avoid confusion with his colony of Cochin (Kochi), in India, he added 'China' to the region's name.
The public source identifies “António de Faria” as portuguese navigator. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around António, Faria and Portuguese.
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This entry incorporates text from “António de Faria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.