In 1521 Ferdinand Magellan returned to Southeast Asia, this time employed by Spa

in, and he came from the east instead of the west. Magellan was looking for a wa
y to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west, and he found it when he sailed dow
n the South American coast to the strait that now bears his name. Morale was hig
h as his three tiny ships entered the Pacific, but the trip took much longer tha
n anyone expected; both the winds and the sea were calm, and no land larger than
a coral atoll was sighted along the way.
At last, after three months of perfect weather and perfect misery they came to G
uam, where they took on supplies and continued west. One month later they sighte
d the Philippines, and Magellan felt like he had been raised from the dead, so h
e named the archipelago "San Lazaro" (St. Lazarus), after the resurrected friend
of Jesus. No European had seen these islands before, but Magellan knew he was c
lose to the Moluccas, because his personal Moluccan slave, Enrique, understood s
ome of the language of the natives.(1)
Magellan did not stop anywhere for long until he reached the central island of C
ebu. There he baptized the local chief, Humabon, and two thousand of his followe
rs. The price of Humabon's conversion was aid in fighting an enemy chief, Lapu-L
apu of Mactan island, one mile away. Magellan was so confident of victory that h
e only took sixty men to Mactan. Humabon brought 600 warriors to help, but Magel
lan told him to stay on the sidelines. His crew could do the job by themselves.
Lapu-Lapu heard they were coming and assembled 1,500 warriors of his own to meet
them. The resulting battle was one-sided; the Spaniards never even got to Macta
n's shore, and only eight of the sixty men survived. Magellan was not among the
survivors. Today the Filipinos venerate Magellan for discovering their islands,
and Lapu-Lapu because he was the first Filipino to resist colonialism.
Magellan's death gave Humabon second thoughts about the alliance. He invited 24
officers to a banquet, plied them with palm wine and women, and then attacked th
em, killing all but two or three. Now only 100 of the original 270 crewmen were
left to the expedition. This was not enough to man all three ships, so they burn
ed the one in worst shape, the Concepcion, and divided her crew and provisions b
etween the other two, the Trinidad and the Victoria. It only takes a week to sai
l from the Philippines to the Moluccas, but the crew had no idea where to go, so
they wandered aimlessly around Borneo and the Sulu Sea for three months. Finall
y they reached the Spice Islands and loaded a cargo of cloves; overloaded, in fa
ct, for the Trinidad sprung a leak and could go no farther. Juan Sebastian del C
ano, the expedition's new commander, chose not to wait for repairs and took the
Victoria alone, a wise move since the Trinidad was captured by the Portuguese no
t long after that. He and 17 men made it back to Spain, 10 months and 11,000 mil
es later. Add to that the 17 men captured and later released by the Portuguese,
and you have 35 survivors for the whole expedition.
When it came to spices the Philippines only had cinnamon, so at first Spain was
more interested in Indonesia. But for a few years it was uncertain who was allow
ed to have both. In 1494 the Pope tried to prevent quarrels between Spain and Po
rtugal by issuing a treaty that divided the whole non-European world between the
m. The dividing line was drawn at longitude 45o West, giving most of the New Wor
ld to Spain and Africa and Brazil to Portugal. Once European ships entered the P
acific, it became necessary to draw a similar property line there. It seemed log
ical to simply continue the first line to the other side of the world, where it
becomes longitude 135o East. The problem was that nobody knew for sure where the
135th meridian actually ran. The news from Magellan's expedition caused Spanish
geographers to draw maps with the crucial meridian passing through Malaya, putt
ing both the Philippines and the Spice Islands on the Spanish side of the line.
Actually they are on the Portuguese side, since 135o East really runs through Ne
w Guinea, but before the invention of accurate chronometers the only way one cou
ld determine longitude was by guessing ("dead reckoning"). Magellan had erred by
 overestimating the size of Asia and underestimating the size of the recently di
scovered Pacific.
On this evidence Spain sent two naval expeditions to conquer the Moluccas: one f
ollowed Magellan's route, and one sailed directly from Panama. Both failed for l
ogistical reasons; the Spanish route from Europe to Indonesia was 5,500 miles lo
nger than the Portuguese one around Africa, giving Portugal the advantage. Final
ly at the Treaty of Sarragosa (1529), Spain accepted a Portuguese offer of 350,0
00 ducats (about $16,450,000 in 1994 dollars) to forget the claim. However, the
Spaniards eventually got a foothold in the Spice Islands, when the natives of Te
rnate became so angry at Portuguese clumsiness and cruelty that they expelled th
eir masters in 1574. The Spaniards immediately moved in and set up their own out
post on the island, which lasted until the Dutch took it in 1663.
Footnotes:
1 - Since Magellan and Enrique had been in Southeast Asia before, they now get t
he credit for being the first men to go all the way around the world.
This is also a good place to point out that while the Philippines was one of the
last places in Southeast Asia to become civilized, Magellan was not the first c
ivilizing influence. Since 1000 A.D. Chinese merchants had been coming to Luzon,
trading Chinese goods for local raw materials like resins, shells, pearls and h
emp. Manila was founded as a trading post to make the Chinese-Filipino trade eas
ier. And there was also the influence of the Moslem traders, mentioned in the pr
evious chapter.
http://www.guidetothailand.com/thailand-history/spain.htm