Customer Reviews

Magellan's Voyage : A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an amazing detalied account written by one of the men who sailed on Magellan's voyage to the spice island of Molucca (1519-1521). This is also the principal first-hand source that we have today. Good in its descriptions of actions and thorough, all things considered, in anthopological details. It reads somewhat more like a log than a story. The translator fails sometimes to explain enigmatic wording, which is not easily conveyed to a modern reader, and expends a great number of the footnotes pointing out differences between this translation of the French MS and the Italian MS which may have better been executed with brackets. However, it is a difficult book to give a star-rating to. Even with the tremendous significance of the voyage that led to the first circumnavigation of the globe, and the details including collections of native words, I found this book lacked grip as a reading experience. For what amounts to only about 100 pages, I found it work to get through a couple chapters in a day. 48 chapters total, and 28 black and white maps from the French edition. But don't let this impression stear you away if you have a genuine interest in the event. This is the book to get for that.

I bought this book after having found out about it in Daniel Boorstin's "The Discoverers". I thought it was amazing that a firsthand account of the first voyage around the world had survived and yet appeared to be of so little renown. I thought that the reviewer from Lexington, KY's remarks about its readability had to be wrong, I mean, what a find this had to be!

I was wrong. This book is far from arresting. I, too, had to struggle to read more than a few pages a night. The book is not really about the circumnavigation of the globe, it was written as a present to Kings and Queens who, at that time, were mostly interested in the spice islands, where they were, and what their minions could expect to find once they found them. Accordingly, the great majority of the book is concerned with the Moluccas, the islands to be found around them, and descriptions of their respective peoples and customs.

As the KY reviewer pointed out before me, the endnotes are mostly a hindrance to the generalist, consisting almost entirely of really picayune differences between the "Yale MS" and several others. Only a handful of this type of endnote are helpful to the generalist. No attempt is made to separate the endnotes that would help a layman sort out the sense of a confusing passage or word from these others. The introduction is mostly a discussion of the differences between extant manuscripts.

This edition is also poorly constructed -- the text is near the binding so you want to open it wide, but the glue is so hard that you're afraid that you'll crack it, so you end up reading the sections near the binding at an angle. The illustrations reproduced have no geographical value and so much of what would be interesting about them is lost because they are reproduced in black and white.

I only give this two stars because Pigafetta's text is inherently interesting and I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading it. ...

I actually bought this book for its description of the Moluccas/Maluku - the very "Spice Islands" this historic voyage set out to find.
While Pigafetta did write more about those islands than about anywhere else they called at, the old-fashioned style made this a hard read. Like those reviewing it before me, I struggled to get through even those chapters relevant to the Moluccas.
Still, it is an important and valuable first hand account of a remote region and of course of a truly historic voyage.

No other book has ever been written by a survivor of the first voyage around the world. This is a really unique resource, and much different than the Marco Polo story, since there is really no doubt that Pigafetta was one of Magellan's crew and that this book is a true memoir of that difficult voyage.

If you are interested in the true story of early European global exploration told firsthand, then you will find that this book is a primary extant resource dating from the early 16th century. That plus its unique nature make it worthwhile even though it was not written by Barbara Tuchman. If you want literature rather than observed events, presented awkwardly and plainly, then this is not the book for you.

Just to be clear, this is not a novel. It is a *detailed* account of the first circumnavigation of the globe. It is readable and presents first-hand impressions of the voyage's travelers. It is an interesting piece of history. For those that have travelled to other countries, this book will make you recall some of the first impressions that people have from other cultures.

I wonder how people get interested about this book. For me, it was the nobel prize acceptance speech by Garcia Marquez in 1982 which included generous references to Pigafetta's story...

First of all, You have to keep in mind that Pigafetta was not a writer. Hes was a noble from Italy, serving on the Diplomatic corps (if could call that in those days) that heard that Magellan was about to start a voyage never done before. The Pigafetta's drive was to see what kind of market was out there and how it would change the geopolitics established.
Globalization. Today we use the web, blackberries and airplanes. In those days it was all about merchant ships, swords and cannon balls.

What can one do when your only source for a major historical event like Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe was, in all probability, written by a spy? Antonio Pigafetta was an Italian from Vicenza who is thought to have written his journal for the Venetians, the Pope, or the Emperor Charles V.

It is interesting that Pigafetta wrote very little of the voyage out to the Spice Islands (the archipelago that includes present day Indonesia and the Philippines), and even less about the return under Sebastián de Elcano, who took over after Magellan was killed in battle at Cebu in the Philippines. Most of his relation is concerned with detailed descriptions of the people and lands of the Spice Islands, including detailed glossaries of words in the various languages that might be of interest to merchants trading in the area. Just what you'd think one would do if he were reporting back to someone else.

As a reporter of people and cultures, Pigafetta was far ahead of his time. As a reporter of a voyage of exploration, however, he is somewhat inadequate. It quickly becomes apparent that the workings of the ship are not his concern. After describing the horrendous 98-day voyage across the Pacific, he ends up by smugly saying that he himself did not get ill -- possibly because he may have had his own private food stock. He describes the relatively placid Cape of Good Hope off South Africa as the most dangerous part of the voyage, probably because he had a rare peaceful crossing of the otherwise stormy Straits of Magellan.

This edition is not the most attractive, and typographically it is difficult to read. The maps provided by Pigafetta serve only to show certain islands with respect to one another, and do not help the reader of his relation in the slightest in terms of their topography or even shape. But then Dover is known for producing relatively inexpensive reprints of works that are in the public domain. Any blame on the edition falls on Yale University, who produced the original.