First Battle of Tamao (1521)

Battle of Tunmen
Date 1521 Location Tuen Mun Result Ming Chinese victory.
Belligerents
Ming Dynasty China	Kingdom of Portugal
Commanders and leaders
	Simão de Andrade
Strength
Squadron of Junks	Caravel ships
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Unknown

Battle of Tunmen
Traditional Chinese
Transcriptions

Transcriptions

The Battle of Tunmen or Tãmão was a naval battle in which the Ming imperial navy defeated a Portuguese fleet led by Simão de Andrade in 1521.

Simão de Andrade had been kidnapping Chinese children to sell in Malacca. and ignored Chinese sovereign authority at Tãmão, building a fort. The Chinese believed that the Portuguese roasted and ate the Chinese children they had kidnapped. The Chinese responded by blockading the Portuguese. The Portuguese would have starved if they had not run the blockade.

The Portuguese called their settlement Tamão, which is understood as a corruption of "Tunmen" (屯門, Túnmén), the name for the western Hong Kong and Shenzhen area that has existed since the Tang dynasty. Chinese sources state that the Portuguese settled around the Tunmen Inlet (屯門澳, Túnmén Ào), but the current whereabouts of the Tunmen Inlet is unknown, so the precise location of the Portuguese settlement and the battlefield remains under debate among historians.

In the present day, "Tunmen" refers to Tuen Mun, the Cantonese reading of the same Chinese characters. This leads some researchers to link the Tunmen of Ming times to Tuen Mun in the New Territories of Hong Kong. "Tunmen Inlet" would then refer to one of two bays around Tuen Mun: Castle Peak Bay, next to the current Tuen Mun New Town; or Deep Bay between the New Territories and Nantou in present-day Shenzhen, where a Ming coastal defense force was stationed.

Adding to the confusion is the description in Portuguese sources that Tãmão was an island. As Tuen Mun is not an island, researchers have proposed that Tãmão actually refers to one of the nearby islands. Lintin Island, west of Tuen Mun, is commonly accepted in Western academia as one of the more likely possibilities, while the much larger Lantau Island has also been suggested.

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