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This article discusses the slave and interpreter of Ferdinand Magellan. Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães fɨɾˈnɐ̃ũ dɨ mɐgɐˈʎɐ̃ĩʃ Fernando de Magallanes (Spring 1480 &ndash April 27 1521 Mactan Island, Cebu See Henry the Black (disambiguation) for other uses
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Enrique of Malacca was a native of the Malay Archipelago. Henry the Black can refer to For Henry the Black duke of Bavaria from 1120 to 1126 see Henry IX Duke of Bavaria. As a social-economic system slavery is a legal institution under which a Person (called "a slave" is compelled to work for another The history of slavery uncovers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures throughout history Slavery as an institution in Mediterranean cultures of the ancient world comprised a mixture of Debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime and The issue of religion and slavery is an area of historical research into the relationship between the world's major Religions and the practice of Slavery. The Bible contains several references to slavery. The Hebrew Bible does not promote Slavery, but neither does it condemn it Christianity does not have a clear position regarding slavery, in favour or against The major juristic schools of Islam traditionally accepted the institution of Slavery. Judaism has been influenced by the experience of slavery of the Hebrews in the land of Egypt, as narrated in the biblical story of The Exodus The Atlantic Slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of African people supplied to the Colonies of the New World This article discusses systems of slavery within Africa the history and effects of the slavery trade upon Africa The Arab Slave trade was the practice of Slavery in West Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and certain parts of Europe (such The history of slavery uncovers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures throughout history Human trafficking is the recruitment transportation harbouring or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery forced labor (including bonded labor or debt bondage and servitude Sexual slavery refers to the organised coercion of persons into various different sexual practices forced Prostitution single-owner sexual slavery Abolitionism was a political movement of the 18th and 19th century which sought to make Slavery illegal particularly in the United States and British West Indies Involuntary servitude is a United States legal and Constitutional term for a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another under some form The Gulag was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations especially in modern or early modern history in which people are employed against their will Debt bondage or bonded labor is a means of paying off loans with direct labor instead of currency or goods An indentured servant is a form of Debt bondage worker The Laborer is under Contract of an Employer for some period of time usually three to Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons — known as slaves — are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labour or services In Law legal status refers to the concept of individuals having a particular place in society relative to the law as it determines the laws which affect them The Malay Archipelago is a name given to the Archipelago located between mainland Southeastern Asia ( Indochina) and Australia. In the firsthand account of Antonio Pigafetta he was named "Henrich" and was enrolled in the official records as "Enrique". "Enrique de Malacca" is an appellation given by Magellan scholars and navigation historians. They have among other given him, the monicker, "Henry the Black. "

Contents

Captured, not bought

Enrique was Ferdinand Magellan's personal servant (slave) and interpreter. Magellan acquired him right after the sacking of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511. He was, by Magellan's own testimony, captured rather than bought which is a notion based on hearsay evidence, the secondary testimony of Maximilianus Transylvanus, but more widely accepted by historians disregarding Magellan's eyewitness testimony. In his Will Magellan states, "And by this my present will and testament, I declare. . . my captured slave Enrique, mulatto, native of the city of Malacca. . . " (See Guillemard, page 321) He was baptized (in Portugal right after Magellan's arrival there in 1511?) assuming the name Henrique (Spanish Enrique),[1]. His baptism is attested to by Magellan himself in his Will where he wrote Enrique "is a Christian. " Eyewitness and contemporary accounts that mention or refer to Enrique--those of Antonio Pigafetta, Ginés de Mafra, The Genoese Pilot, Antonio de Herrera, Peter Martyr, João de Barros, Sebastian Elcano, The Genoese Pilot, Francisco Lopez de Gomara, and Bartolome de las Casas--attest to his being a slave but not one report negates Magellan's assertion Enrique was captured.

Panglima Awang

Malaysian literary works of the 20th century refer to him as "Panglima Awang". His name is mentioned only in Pigafetta and the muster roll, and nowhere else.

Malay interpreter, his principal role

Enrique worked as a personal slave and interpreter, accompanying Magellan back to Europe, and onwards on Magellan's famous search for a westward passage to the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth 's Oceanic divisions Ginés de Mafra explicitly states in his account Enrique was brought along in the expedition primarily because he "spoke Malay. Ginés de Mafra (1493 – 1546 was a Spanish explorer who explored the Philippine Islands in the 16th century "

Did he speak Cebuano?

The place where he is supposed to have spoken and was understood by the natives was not Cebu. It was the island port of Mazaua. Best evidence--historiographical, archaeological, geomorphological, linguistic, geographical, navigational--point to 9° North as the correct latitude of Mazaua. The exact location of that latitude is inside present-day Butuan where Butuanon is the indigenous language and is also the root of a derivative language, Tausug. Butuanon is a member of the Bisaya language family to which Cebuano also belongs.

If we assume, going by the logic of those who claim Enrique came from the Philippines, Enrique would be Mazauan not Cebuano since he spoke Butuanon, the language of Mazaua. But it is clear from the Pigafetta account, Enrique spoke Malay, the trade lingua franca of Southeast Asia, and it was raia Siaiu who translated Malay into Butuanon.

In Maximilian Transylvanus' relation, De Moluccis. . . , the inability of Enrique to speak Cebuano is unmistakably referred to: "Magellan had a slave. . . [who] was a perfect master of the Spanish language, and, with the assistance of one of the islanders of Subuth [Cebu] as interpreter, who knew the language of the Moluccas, our men managed all their communications. " (See Magellan's Voyage, edited by Lord Stanley of Alderley, page 200)

Pigafetta identifies the above interpreter as a "merchant from Ciama [presumably Siam or Thailand], who had remained there [Cebu] to do trade in gold and slaves". Pigafetta further relates, "The interpreter [Enrique] told him [Siamese trader] that the captain [Magellan], as captain of so great a king as his, would not pay tribute to any lord in the world, and that if he desired peace he should have peace, and if he desired war, war he should have. Then the aforesaid merchant replied to the king [Humabon of Cebu]in his own language, Cata raia chita, which is to say, Have good care, O king, what you do, for these men are of those who have conquered Calicut, Malacca, and all India the Greater. " (See page 75, Skelton English edition of the Nancy-Libri-Phillipps-Beinecke-Yale codex)

Was Enrique Cebuano?

Carlos Quirino, the first to talk of Enrique being from Cebu arrived at his hunch based on a number of purely imagined, fictitious incident. In an article published in a magazine, the Philippines Free Press of December 28, 1991, Quirino states as fact the following incident: "He [Magellan] learned that there was a teen-age male to be bought at the slave market, one who, after he had conversations with him, said that he had come from an island farther east than Sabah on the same longitude as the Moluccas, but considerably north of it. The young slave, subsequently baptized with the name Enrique must have told Magellan how he had been captured by Muslim pirates and that Europeans were unknown in his area of the Pacific. He must have come from one of the islands then known as the Luzones about 12 days sail northeast of Borneo. "

This fictitious incident stems from, first of all, the idea Enrique was bought which is belied by Magellan himself. In his Will the Portuguese navigator expressly states his slave was captured, not bought after knowing of the slave's homeland. Quirino conjures a conversation between the slave and his master which has no provenance in any record. Quirino makes it appear Enrique knew of the name, location and longitude of the Pacific Ocean which all sound contrived to fit present-day knowledge. In any case, such a conversation was conveniently conjured to become basis for the idea Magellan's choice of Enrique was because Enrique came from another island that by coincidence suspiciously seems to be somewhere in the Philippines and more specifically Cebu.

Quirino cites the Will of Magellan and concludes why Magellan said Enrique was from Malacca. "Magellan obviously wanted to keep secret the real birthplace of Enrique as east of Borneo. " And why did Magellan lie? Quirino suggests Magellan, after knowing of the homeland of Enrique, had an idea. "The idea of claiming that region [what is now the Philippines], composed of a group of islands, must have entered the mind of Magellan. So he returned to Portugal in 1512, taking with him Enrique to propose to his master, King Emanuel of Portugal, that he be allowed to lead a seafaring expedition to those islands and claim them as part of the Portuguese empire. " Where Quirino got this idea, the Filipino historian gives us no inkling. As far as I know there is no record of what Magellan had in mind. But in any case this fact has not stopped Quirino from reading Magellan's mind 480 years after the supposed moment the explorer thought of it.

Malay, lingua franca in SEA, spoken by Mazaua king Siaiu

When Magellan's fleet reached "Mazaua" -- in the Philippines somewhere in latitude 9° North (by the Genoese Pilot) or 9° 20' N (by Francisco Albo) or 9° 40' N (by Pigafetta), Enrique was able to converse with raia Siaiu, the "king" of that island-port, who spoke, according to Pigafetta, many languages including Malay Language which was the trade lingua franca in the Southeast Asia region. The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP The Malay language ( ISO 639-1 code MS is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the This linguistic fact has been overlooked by historians, particularly Carlos Quirino, who erroneously assert Malay was not spoken in the Philippines. Pigafetta was quite explicit in this, and he wrote rather clearly it was raia Siaiu who was doing the translation, "And when they came near the captain's ship, the said slave spoke to that king, who understood him well. For, in that country, the kings know more languages than the common people do. " Magellan had provided in his will (see Guillemard, page 321)[1] that his Malay interpreter was to be freed upon his death, but the remaining Europeans were reluctant to let him go. According to the account of Maximilianus Transylvanus it was Juan Serrano who mistreated Enrique, thereby causing him to plot the massacre of Mactan; Pigafetta, who did not attend the banquet that served as the trap, blames Duarte Barbosa. Maximilianus Transylvanus (Transilvanus Transylvanianus, also Maximilianus of Transylvania and Maximilian (Maximiliaen von Sevenborgen Juan Serrano was a Sixteenth century Navigator who sailed with Ferdinand Magellan during the first Circumnavigation of the world ( 1517 This page refers to the island in Cebu. For the battle that happened here see Battle of Mactan, For the airport of this island see Mactan-Cebu International Antonio Pigafetta (c 1491 was an Italian Scholar born in Vicenza.

Did he plot massacre?

There is no definitive evidence as to weather or not Enrique plotted with King Humabon to massacre the Spanish during the banquet of May 1, 1521. Barros, The Anonymous Portuguese, de Herrera--all say Enrique was innocent. On the other hand, Pigafetta, Transylvanus and Gomara all assert Enrique conspired with the Cebuanos. Elcano, in a notatized testimony sworn before Alcalde Leguizamo on Oct. 1522, relates the incident essentially as Pigafetta et al describe it.

What came of Enrique after May 1, 1521?

What came of Enrique? The Anonymous Portuguese states in his account that Enrique had died in Mactan. He was egregiously mistaken. The slave was very much alive on May 1, 1521 and attended the banquet. Was he killed there, a probability suggested by official records at the Casa de Contratacion which lists him as one of those massacred? Was he spared in the massacre, as would be logical and likely if he was a co-conspirator?

Carlos Quirino, father of the "Enrique de Cebu" brainstorm, had a clear idea of what happened to the slave after May 1. Here is Quirino's story of post-massacre Enrique: "He [Enrique] proved useful to Humabon for his knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese. He must have married, raised a family, and passed away in his seventies just before Legazpi arrived. " Quirino got all these minutiae from out of thin air. Nothing is known of Enrique after the May 1. And everything that has been written of his activities after that day are in the realm of pure fiction.

Was Enrique the first circumnavigator?

The whole idea of Enrique having been the first to circumnavigate rests on Carlos Quirino's unsupported assertion--a blatant error--Magellan's slave spoke Cebuano, a notion contradicted by direct evidence, and that Malay was not spoken in the Philippines, a fallacy negated by linguistics experts. It is also a notion that rests on a complete misreading of Pigafetta.

The other notion that he went back to his homeland--either Malacca or Sumatra--rests on imagination without a shrift of evidence. Nothing is known beyond what Pigafetta wrote of Enrique on the day of the May 1, 1521 massacre.

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Bergreen, L. Over The Edge of The World

Bibliography

—1522. The Narrative of the Anonymous Portuguese. In: The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed. & tr. ). London 1874.

Note: Enrique means Brave. It actually means "ruler of the household", according to [http://www.zelo.com/firstnames/findresults.asp?name=Enrique&x=23&y=13 ]

See also

Other sources and external links

Antonio Pigafetta (c 1491 was an Italian Scholar born in Vicenza.
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