Ferdinand Magellan

- Is a Portuguese explorer and a subject of the Hispanic Monarchy from 1581.

- Born on the 4th of February 1480
- Known for his plans and led the 1519 Spanish Expedition to the East Indies across the
Pacific Ocean
- Discovered the Interoceanic passage bearing thereafter his name
- First European navigation from the Atlantic to Asia
- Was killed in the battle of Mactan in 1512, in present day Philippines
- 2 ships survived the expedition
- Completed the first circumnavigation of the earth
- They returned to Spain n 1522
* Fernando de Magellan attempted to sail to the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands") by sailing
westwards around the American continent. King Manuel I of Portugal refused to support
Magellan's plan, so Magellan left Portugal and proposed the same expedition to King Charles I
of Spain. Magellan was appointed admiral of the Spanish Fleet and given command of the
Armada of Molucca. *

1. Magellan’s expedition had a multinational crew.

Although it was a Spanish expedition, Magellan’s fleet featured a culturally diverse

crew. Spaniards and Portuguese made up the vast majority of the sailors, but the
voyage also included mariners from Greece, Sicily, England, France, Germany and
even North Africa.

2. Magellan’s voyage was sparked by a treaty between Spain and Portugal.

Magellan originally launched his expedition as a means of finding a western route to

the Moluccas, a small archipelago in Indonesia known for its stores of precious spices
like cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. The Spanish were desperate to discover this
alternate path because of 1494’s Treaty of Tordesillas, a decree from Pope Alexander
VI that had essentially divided the world in half between the Spanish and the
Portuguese. This agreement placed the more practical eastern route to the Spice
Islands under Portuguese control, forcing the Spanish to find a new passage by sailing
west around South America.
3. Magellan was considered a traitor to his home country of Portugal.

While Ferdinand Magellan was originally from Portugal, King Charles I of Spain
ultimately sponsored his voyage. This outraged the King Manuel I of Portugal, who
sent operatives to disrupt Magellan’s preparations, ordered that his family properties
be vandalized and may have made an attempt to assassinate him. Once the expedition
sailed, Manuel I even ordered two groups of Portuguese caravels to pursue Magellan’s
fleet in the hopes of capturing the navigator and returning him to his homeland in
chains.

4. Many of Magellan’s crew mutinied or deserted the expedition.

Magellan’s mostly Spanish crew resented the idea of being led by a Portuguese
captain, and the expedition was forced to weather two mutinies before it had even
reached the Pacific. The first of these failed revolts was easily unraveled, but the
second proved more elaborate. Worried that Magellan’s obsession with finding
passage to the Pacific was going to doom the expedition, in April 1520 three of his
five ships turned against him. Magellan and his supporters ultimately thwarted the
revolt, and he even marooned two men on an island when he found they were planning
a third mutiny. The rebellions continued later that year when the vessel San Antonio
deserted the fleet and prematurely returned to Spain.

5. Magellan’s expedition claimed to have encountered giants in South America.

While anchored near modern-day Argentina, Magellan’s men reported encountering 8-

foot-tall men on the beaches of Patagonia. After befriending these “giants,” Magellan
supposedly tricked them into boarding his ship and took one of the men captive. The
giant was later baptized and named Paul, but died during the fleet’s long crossing of
the Pacific Ocean. Historians have surmised that Magellan’s giants were in actuality
members of the Tehuelche, a naturally tall tribe of Indians native to southern Chile
and Argentina. While Magellan’s men almost certainly exaggerated the height of the
Tehuelche, the myth of Patagonian giants would persist for many years.

6. Magellan gave the Pacific Ocean its name.

After weathering horrific storms near southern South America and losing one of his
ships to rough seas, Magellan finally entered what is now known as the Strait of
Magellan in November 1520. Crossing into a calm and gentle ocean, he named it “Mar
Pacifico,” which means “peaceful sea” in Portuguese. Magellan believed that he would
quickly reach the Spice Islands, but his beleaguered fleet would sail the Pacific Ocean
for 98 days before reaching any habitable land.
7. Magellan was a staunch Christian evangelist—and this may have cost him his life.

Although it was never an official part of his mission, Magellan took great pains to
convert all the indigenous peoples he encountered to Christianity. The most notable
example came in April 1521 in the Philippines, where he baptized King Humabon of
Cebu along with thousands of his subjects. Magellan’s religious fervor was so strong
that he threatened to kill those chieftains that resisted converting to Christianity, and
this harsh decree ultimately proved to be his downfall. When a king named Lapu-Lapu
refused to convert, Magellan’s men burned his village on the island of Mactan.
Magellan later returned to Mactan with 49 men and demanded that Lapu-Lapu yield to
his authority. The king refused, and in the ensuing battle Magellan was killed after he
was struck by a spear and then repeatedly stabbed by the islanders’ cutlasses and
scimitars. In the Philippines, where Magellan is remembered as a tyrant rather than a
hero, the Battle of Mactan is reenacted every April 27, with a well-known Filipino
actor playing the role of Lapu-Lapu.

8. Magellan’s slave may have been the first person to truly circumnavigate the globe.

One of the most important members of Magellan’s voyage was his personal slave
Enrique, who had been with the captain since an earlier voyage to Malacca in 1511. A
native of the East Indies, Enrique reportedly spoke a Malay dialect and acted as the
expedition’s interpreter during their time in the Philippines. As many historians have
noted, if Enrique was originally from that part of the world, then by the time the
expedition reached the Philippines he would have already circled the earth and
returned to his homeland. If true, this would mean the slave Enrique—rather than any
of the European mariners—was the first person to circumnavigate the globe.

9. Magellan only deserves partial credit for the circumnavigation.

Magellan is often cited as the first explorer to have circumnavigated the globe, but
this is not technically true. While he organized the voyage and negotiated the
treacherous South American strait and the crossing of the Pacific, Magellan was killed
before the mission ever reached the Spice Islands. Credit for the successful
circumnavigation of the globe should also go to the Basque mariner Juan Sebastian
Elcano, who commanded the return voyage of Victoria—the only surviving vessel—
from late 1521 until its arrival in Spain in September 1522.

10. The next circumnavigation of the globe took place nearly 60 years after the return
of Magellan’s expedition.
When the lone vessel Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522, only 18 men
remained out of the expedition’s original crew of about 260. Circumnavigating the
globe ultimately proved to be such a herculean feat—and the Magellan expedition’s
success so improbable—that it was 58 years before it was repeated. Led by the English
navigator Sir Francis Drake, this second circumnavigation of the globe first sailed in
1577 and largely followed the same route as Magellan. Like Magellan’s armada,
Drake’s fleet was also ravaged by the long journey, and only his flagship Golden Hind
remained when he returned to England in 1580.

Antonio Pigafetta

- Italian navigator
- Studied Navigation
- Hired by Magellan to keep detailed document of the voyage
- Joined Magellan under the flag of Emperor Charles V
- Remarkably, Pigafetta wrote a brief glossary of the Butuanon and Cebuano
languages, with most of the words still widely used to this day by native speakers of
those language. The fact is, after three centuries of Spanish, and almost half a century of
American rule, the Philippines can count more than 175 languages.

Treaty of Tordesillas

- An agreement between 2 countries, Spain and Portugal in settling conflict over

lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus and the late 15ht-
century voyagers.
- Signed in Tordesillas, Spain on June 7 1494
- Authenticated in Setubal, Portugal

* Ferdinand and Isabella enlisted an papal support to claim their rights to the new
world to inhibit Portuguese and other possible rival claimants.

Pope Alexander VI issued bulls setting up line of demarcation from pole to pole
west of the Cape Verde Islands see Cabo Verde.
 Spain was given the exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered
lands in the region of west of the line.

Portugal on the other hand were to keep all newly discovered and to be discovered
lands on the east side of the line. *

5 ships commissioned by the voyage of Magellan

1. The Trinidad ( Commanded by Magellan)

2. San Antonio – Abandoned the expedition in South America and return to Spain
3. Victoria – Went back to Spain after the Voyage
4. Conception – Damaged and burned by the crew and lost at Cebu
5. Santiago – Got lost at the sea

Spice Island

- Also known as the Moluccas

- Made up of Indonesian Archipelago ; Capital of the Region is Ambon City
- Spice trade was a thing even before the first Europeans set foot on the Island
- 16 th century- when it got its nickname, Spice Island
- The Island is full of large number of aromatic plants
- Nutmeg and cloves were largely drove the spices trade
- Spices Island is one of the may reasons for the first circumnavigation of the
world
- Archipelago of Indonesia

Circumnavigation

- To go completely around especially by waters

- To go around instead of through
- Bypass circumnavigate a congested area
- Feranao de Magalhaes ( Ferdinand Magellan) most noted Portuguese born
explorer who instigated and organized the first circumnavigation of the globe in
1512 to 1522
King Charles I

- Charles I of Spain, born on February 24, 1500, was king of Spain from 1516 to
1556 and Holy Roman emperor, as Charles V, from 1519 to 1558. The grandson of
Ferdinand II and Isabella I as well as the emperor Maximilian I, Charles inherited an
empire that stretched from Germany to the Americas
- He sponsored Magellan in his plan to voyage around the Globe
- King Charles set out 5 fully supplied ships to sail the distance he proposed for
Magellan

Primary and Secondary sources

- Sources of Information about the Voyage of Magellan is divided into primary

and secondary sources:

- the first class including the journals of those who knew him and took part in his great
expedition, as the "Unknown Portuguese," of Ramusio; Francisco Albo, whose "log-
book" (trustworthy, though fragmentary) is contained in Navarrete's
famous Coleccion; the "Genoese Pilot"—who wrote excellent Portuguese, by-the-way;
and Antonio Pigafetta, whose account of the voyage, the best and most complete, was
first written in Italian.
- The second class comprises: Maximilian Transylvanus, and Peter Martyr, both
contemporaries, who conversed with the Magellan survivors in Seville; Oviedo, who was
then in Darien; Correa, author of Lendas da India; Herrera, Spanish historiographer, and
others.
- Though Pigafetta obtained permission to print as early as 1524, it is not known that he
availed himself of the privilege before 1536, the date of the "first Italian edition." The
first English translation of his work is contained in Richard Eden's Decades of the Newe
World, London, 1555, and follows Martyr, Ramusio, and Transylvanus.
- An excellent translation was published by the Hakluyt Society (Lord Stanley of
Alderley's) in 1894; but by far the best, as well as most recent, is that by J. A. Robertson,
from, and with, the original text—a limited edition, the A. H. Clark Company, Cleveland,
Ohio, 1906. A compact and comprehensive volume is the Life of Magellan (with all
authorities cited), by F. H. H. Guillemard, London and New York, 1890.

History and Historiography

King Philip II
- He who made the name of the Archipelago of the Philippines

Ferdinand Magellan
- First ever to discover Philippines in the context of the European

Colonization of Spain in the Philippines

- Where we became Filipinos

Most record of the Filipinos were written by the colonizers/ Foreigners. But, Philippines doesn’t
have a record of what really happened because we don’t have a record coming from our natives.

Primary Sources:
- Material Evidences
- Old maps
- Black and White Photographs
- Oral History

Secondary Sources
- It interprets and analyzes the information
- Not critical in analyzing information
- Misinformation
- Testimony of someone who wasn’t in the particular event
- Information from a primary source or the eye witness

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Was Antonio present in the said event?