Straits
Beyond the Myth of Magellan
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2022
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2022
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'Rigorous, deft and entertaining ... a sparkling read' - The Spectator
'The ride is thrilling ... a work of serious scholarship' - Sunday Telegraph
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For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry.
Now historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage. He reveals that Magellan did not attempt – much less accomplish – a journey around the globe, and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.
Fernández-Armesto probes the passions and tensions that drove Magellan to adventure and drew him to disaster: the pride that became arrogance, audacity that became recklessness, determination that became ruthlessness, romanticism that became irresponsibility, and superficial piety that became, in adversity, irrational exaltation. And as the real Magellan emerges, so too do his true ambitions, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold.
Offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium, Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan "never considered—let alone accomplished—the circumnavigation of the world" and is only "exceptional because his failure was total," according to this revelatory if somewhat ponderous biography. Historian Fernández-Armesto (Out of Our Minds) details the 1519 expedition that brought Magellan enduring fame, while simultaneously discussing the historical context and publications that created the myth of Magellan. Though Magellan was under orders from the king of Spain to find an easier passage to the Spice Islands (present-day Moluccas), Fernández-Armesto alleges that the explorer was obsessed with staking claim to the archipelago now known as the Philippines, where he knew gold was to be found. Deviating from his assignment almost immediately, Magellan executed several sailors and co-captains who questioned his route, massacred Indigenous people, and died in a suicidal battle with natives on Mactan Island in April 1521. Despite these failures, Magellan's legend formed almost immediately, thanks largely to an Italian scholar who joined the expedition and was the first to publish an account of it. Fernández-Armesto makes a persuasive case, though his tangential musings and knotty syntax sometimes make for choppy waters. Still, this is a meticulous indictment of one of the Age of Exploration's biggest names.
