Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history,
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If you studied history in high school you might have heard that Ferdinand Magellan was the first
person to circumnavigate the globe and if that's what you heard, or that's what you remember,
you would be wrong. While Magellan's expedition from 1519 to 1522 was the first to circumnavigate
the globe, Magellan himself didn't make it the whole way. He actually died in 1521 in the Kingdom
of Mactan, which is part of the modern-day country of the Philippines. And it was another one of his
officers, one Sebastian Elcano, who actually completed the circumnavigation of the globe.
But it's not just interesting that Magellan didn't make it the whole way,
and that people in the West don't seem to remember that Magellan didn't make it the whole way,
because it's important why Magellan didn't make it the whole way. Because in the Philippines,
the death of Ferdinand Magellan is considered one of the most important events in history, and here
in the West we really have no idea that he even died. And we really should know how and why he
died, because it provides a really great lesson on the nature of the Era of Discovery and Conquest.
And it explains a lot about world politics today. And so today we are going to remember the
well remembered in the Philippines, and forgotten in the Western world, 1521 Battle of Mactan.
To understand how Magellan came to die in the Philippine Islands you have to understand a
little bit about how Magellan came to be in the Philippine Islands, and that all has to do with
the treaty that was signed in 1494 between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Castile
in Spain. And essentially the purpose of the treaty was to divide up the new world between
Portugal and Spain. Now understand, this treaty didn't pay any attention to the interest to say,
other European countries in the New World, that certainly didn't pay any attention to the interest
of hundreds of millions of indigenous people who thought of the “New World” as, you know,
“Home”. But it was intended to reduce conflict between Spain and Portugal over the new lands,
and essentially what the treaty did is they drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and
said, Portugal gets East and Spain gets West. And that offered a unique challenge for Spain because
Spain wanted access to the Spice Islands, and because of the treaty they couldn't do that
by going around Africa. And so what they really needed was a route that would go around
the Americas, the lands that were discovered by Columbus, and go westerly to the Spice Islands,
a Western route to the Spice Islands. And that's where Ferdinand Magellan comes in.
Now ironically, Magellan himself was Portuguese, but he brought a proposal to the King of Spain,
Charles the First, to lead an expedition to identify the western route, and Charles the First
agreed to fund an expedition that included, five ships and about 270 sailors,
and that expedition kicked off in August of 1519.
After spending the winter in South America, Magellan discovered the Strait that allows you
to go around South America, that's now called the Strait of Magellan, in November of 1520.
And by then he was already down to just three ships, one had been wrecked, one had mutinied
and returned back to Spain, and so those three ships went through the Strait of Magellan,
and by November 28th they were the first Europeans to enter the Pacific Ocean.
After being the first Europeans to visit the island of Guam, they went on and by March 21st of
1521, became the first Europeans in the Philippine island. And there Magellan found an ally in the
form of Humabon, who was the Rajah or King of the Rajahnate of Cebu, which was in the southern part
of the Philippine Islands, and Rajah Humabon and his wife converted to Catholicism, the first
to do so in the Philippines. And then the Rajah sent an order throughout his kingdom saying that
everybody should convert to Catholicism and that they should send food and supplies for Magellan's
ships. While the order was generally followed except for just one of Humabons chieftains, one of
the Datu, the chieftain of the island of Mactan, whose name was Lapu-Lapu, and Lapu-Lapu said that
he would not convert to Catholicism, and that he would not follow the orders of the King of Spain.
And so Humabon suggested that Magellan take his ships over Mactan, and force Lapu-Lapu to submit.
It's clear that Magellan was overconfident because he took with him just sixty men, and even though
he had warriors of Humabon with him, he told them to stay in the ships because he wanted them to
witness the power of his European weapons. The actual battle was on April 27th and because he
left a few of his men to guard his boats, Magellan only had 49 men with him, whereas Lapu-Lapu had
1,500 warriors. And we don't know much about Lapu-Lapu, but it turns out that he was a pretty
brilliant tactician, or at least he had Magellan's strength figured out, I mean first of all,
on the island there was so much coral and rock out in the ocean that Magellan ships could not get
close enough to use their cannon, and that already denied Magellan some of his most powerful weapons.
But then Lapu-Lapu kept his warriors at a good enough distance, then Magellan's men with their
muskets and crossbows, couldn't do a lot of damage, and he waited to charge until they
were almost out of ammunition. When his 1,500 men did charge, Lapu-Lapu told them stab at the legs,
because while the Spanish wore good armor, they didn't armor their legs and most importantly
Lapu-Lapu told them, kill the leader. So that they all charged Magellan, because Lapu-Lapu knew
that the whole attack would fail if Magellan fell, and so 1,500 guys came to stab Ferdinand Magellan.
Magellan was swamped and killed, now many of his troops got away but they lost about fourteen
other troops in the battle, and while a battle where only 14 died doesn't seem like a big deal
the actual loss of Magellan delayed the Spanish dominance of the Philippines by around 40 years.
With the loss of so many people in the battle, the expedition didn't have enough sailors left
to operate three ships, so one of the ships was abandoned, one tried to return home via
the Pacific route the way that they came, and one decided to try to return home via the
Indian Ocean and around the Horn of Africa and that's the only ship that made it back. Of the
271 sailors that had left on the expedition, there were only 18 on that boat that returned to Spain,
with one Sebastian Elcano that had circumnavigated the globe. We really don't know what happened to
Lapu-Lapu, there's no record of his death, but according to local legend he didn't die,
he turned into a stone, and local fishermen still throw coins at a vaguely human shaped
rock in the ocean there to thank Lapu-Lapu for the privilege of fishing in his waters.
The Battle of Mactan is important for a few different reasons starting of course with the
death of Ferdinand Magellan, who was a very powerful personality, and who clearly would
have done more in his life if he hadn't ended up on the end of a spear. It also represents
the errors that were commonly made by Europeans in the Age of Discovery and Conquest, that arrogance,
that underestimating the local population, that overestimating the power of European arms and that
inability or unwillingness to understand local customs and power structures, and those errors
would be repeated again and again in the Far East, in the Pacific, in Africa and South America.
But most of all the Battle of Mactan is important for the people of the Philippine Islands, I mean
immediately one of the effects was it was many years before Spain can mount another meaningful
expedition to the Philippine Islands, but in the long run Lapu-Lapu has retroactively become the
symbol of Philippine resistance to foreign rule, which has really been a cause in the Philippine
Islands since the 16th century, and this a little bit anachronistic because the fight,
the Battle of Mactan, was really over local power structures in the kingdom. But the reason
that Lapu-Lapu resisted was because he did not want to have a European religion forced on him,
and so he is this symbol for people who fight the Age of Exploration and Conquest. There are several
statues of Lapu-Lapu there are the main city in Mactan is named Lapu -Lapu City, Lapu-Lapu's
head was on the 1 Sentimo coin in the 1960s and 1970s, and the people of Mactan still annually
reenact the Battle of Mactan. And that's a real irony because, here we have Ferdinand Magellan,
who is a man whose navigational skills were so important that there are several geographic
features on Earth named after Ferdinand Magellan, but there are actually craters on the moon, and
on Mars that are named after Ferdinand Magellan, and two of the closest galaxies to the Earth are
named after Ferdinand Magellan, and yet his death is a symbol to people who oppose everything that
his navigational skills brought, which was the theft of their land and their culture,
and that irony alone is enough reason for you to know about the 1521 Battle of Mactan.
I'm the History Guy, I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series,
five minutes of history short snippets of forgotten history five to ten minutes long. If you
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