Galeote Pereira - Pereira's Story

Pereira's Story

Several of the Portuguese survivors of the 1549 incident and the subsequent imprisonment and exile wrote accounts of their experiences. The first of them was published as early as 1555. However, Galeote Pereira's is considered the most complete, and is the best known.

It is not known when Pereira first wrote his account. While C. R. Boxer surmised that Pereira may have penned his recollections soon after his escape to safety, the earliest known manuscript of his notes dates to 1561. It is a copy made by Indian pupils of the Jesuit Saint Paul's College in Goa, and sent to one of the Jesuits' central offices in Europe. While the original Portuguese text, entitled "Algũas cousas sabidas da China ..." ("Some things known about China ...") was not published at the time, its (slightly abridged) Italian translation appeared in Venice in 1565 in a book containing a number of other reports sent by Jesuits from India. An English translation of that Italian text, made by a former English Jesuit Richard Willis was printed in 1577, in the History of Travayle in the West and East Indies, under the title "Certain reports of the province China, learned through the Portugals there imprisoned, and chiefly by the relation of Galeote Pereira, a gentleman of good credit, that lay prisoner in that country many years. Done out of Italian by R.W.". Willis' translation was reprinted a number of times.

A complete English translation of the original (i.e., the earliest known to us) Portuguese manuscript was made by Boxer and published in 1953 in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, vol. XXII, pp. 63-92. The original Portuguese text has since been published in Portugal, and in vol. 153 of Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu in Rome.

Published accounts of other Portuguese prisoners captured together with Pereira include the letter of Afonso Ramiro, sent from Wuzhou to the Portuguese base at Langbaijiao in 1555.