On 20 September 1519 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan left Spain and headed westwards on a voyage that would subsequently echo through the centuries as the first circumnavigation of the earth. The riches of Asia were first tasted by the Portuguese in the late 1490s but the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas reserved for Portugal the eastern-bound maritime routes to Asia. It thus became commercially imperative for the Spanish to find a western-route to Asia, and in particular to the riches of the Spice Islands in the south western Pacific where nutmeg, mace and cloves were to be exclusively discovered. Magellan's subsequent voyage is both well known and poorly understood. 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. Magellan, in fact, did not attempt – much less accomplish – a journey around the globe, and in his own lifetime the explorer was actually abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure. His real ambitions were in fact, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market and more on exploiting Filipino gold. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke to the brilliant historian who has made this case and untangled the myths that made Magellan a hero, Felipe Fernandez Armesto. Felipe occupies the William P. Reynolds Chair at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a professor of history and, concurrently, of classics and of the history and philosophy of science.

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