Includes:
•Charles River Editors’ original biography of Ferdinand Magellan
•Magellan’s Voyage Round the World by a Genoese pilot, one of two contemporary accounts of the voyage
•The Story of Magellan and the Discovery of the Philippines by Hezekiah Butterworth
“Most versed in nautical charts, he knew better than any other the true art of navigation, of which it is certain proof that he by his genius, and his intrepidity, without anyone having given him the example, how to attempt the circuit of the globe which he had almost completed... The glory of Magellan will survive him.” – Antonio Pigafetta
Ferdinand Magellan, was unquestionably one of the more remarkable figures of the so-called Age of Discovery, a period in which Europeans spread their political and commercial influence around the globe. Magellan has sometimes been credited with “proving the world was round,” since he and his crew were the first Europeans to reach Asia via a westward route. But such a claim is based on a popular misconception, referred to by historian Jeffrey Burton Russell as the “myth of the flat earth”: the belief that medieval Europe had erroneously believed the earth was flat. It is also not quite true that Magellan himself circumnavigated the globe – in fact, he died in combat in the Philippines, leaving his surviving crew to complete the voyage.
Perhaps the most important fact about Magellan, though, is that he succeeded precisely where Christopher Columbus before him had failed. While Columbus has gone down in history as the discoverer of America (for Europeans), finding a new continent was never his true goal: in fact, America came into Columbus’s life as an unanticipated and troublesome obstacle on his planned journey to Asia. Magellan’s story lacks the dramatic martial flair of the stories of the conquistadors such his exact contemporary Cortés, but he remains an exemplary figure for having connected the two opposite ends of the earth in a period we might think of as the first era of globalization.
The Ultimate Ferdinand Magellan Collection chronicles Magellan’s life and his historic expedition, analyzing the aftermath of his expeditions and his legacy. It includes Charles River Editors’ original biography, the history of the voyage as recorded by a Genoese pilot, and an account of the expedition written by Butterworth. It also includes pictures and a Table of Contents.
