Measuring Inflation Has Always Been Controversial

Economists, investors, and pundits have complained about inflation measures ever since the national CPI was introduced in 1921. 

Mark Twain captured America’s spirit of skepticism when he listed the three kinds of lies— “lies, damn lies, and statistics”—though he might have added government statistics. That skepticism is playing itself out in the current inflation debate.

Since peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, inflation fell sharply toward the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2% before plateauing above 3%, according to the consumer price index, or CPI, compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Other government price measures, including the Fed’s favored personal consumption expenditures price index, or PCE, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, largely agree with the CPI. Presidential candidate Donald Trump, among others, doesn’t.

“They had inflation of—the real number, if you really get into the real number, it’s probably 40% or 50% when you add things up, when you don’t just put in the numbers that they want to hear,” the former president said at a June campaign event.

Casting doubt on government data finds receptive listeners, as Americans name high prices as the biggest threat to household finances.

It doesn’t help that inflation measures involve complex calculations with names like “hedonic adjustments,” and that even academics use four-letter expletives in arguing their cases.

Where economists see Adam Smith’s invisible hand at work, others see something more sinister. Recent reports of an $18 BigMac have fueled talk of pricing conspiracies.

The Fed is distrusted on the political left and right, with some calling it an “economic manipulator” that should be abolished. “America has a strong populist tradition,” former Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke writes in 21st Century Monetary Policy.

“Populists—from Andrew Jackson to, more recently, members of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street—have always been hostile to perceived concentrations of power in finance and government.”

That hostility has been present since the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the first national CPI, which included data going back to 1913, in February 1921. In a Page One editorial headlined “Deceptive Index Numbers,” The Wall Street Journal accused the BLS of using “Bolshevist calculations” to assume “an impossible minimum living wage of the lordly figure of $2,600 [around $45,000 today] a year.”

Further, it wrote, “a series of radical readjustments” in the index made it “look fishier than ever.” Updates in the CPI mix, in fact, keep it relevant. Cars and radios, for instance, weren’t common enough to be included in the earliest years. Straw hats were prominently represented in 1919 before falling from fashion.

Some items have remained. Back in 1913, round steak cost 22.3 cents a pound, which converts to about $7 today—a bargain, compared with the actual U.S. average of $8.25 in May. Butter, though, cost 38.3 cents a pound then—the equivalent of around $12 today—versus the $4.59May average.

Despite its “Bolshevist calculations,” the CPI became indispensable to business.

In 1922, Barron’s used it to show how prices had fallen from inflationary postwar highs, concluding that further business recovery “is fairly assured.” American’s changing spending is seen in comparing today’s expenditures with the Great Depression.

From 1935-39, food represented 33.9% of an average household’s expenses; it accounts for just 13% today. Apparel ate up 11% of a Depression era paycheck; it’s 2.6% today. Shelter costs, however, have risen from 33.7% to 36.1%; and medical care is up from 4% to 7.9%.

The bureau compiles the CPI from surveys of metro-area businesses and households, collecting about 94,000 prices and 8,000 rental-housing-unit quotes a month. Indexes are compiled by category, region, and in variations such as the “sticky price,” or core measure used by both the CPI and PCE that excludes food and energy prices.

Excluding food and energy seems counterintuitive, since they make up a large chunk of expenditures. But commodities are susceptible to price disturbances outside of normal supply and demand. Think of the oil embargo of 1973, which tripled prices in months, or the spike in grain prices caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Central banks lack tools to address such shocks.

The CPI shelter-costs calculation, too, draws scrutiny. It uses rent for renter-occupied housing, and implicit rent for owner-occupied units.

Why not consider ownership costs? Owned housing units, along with mortgage interest, property taxes, and improvements are considered capital goods— rather than consumption items.

Perhaps the most controversial practice is known as hedonic adjustment. If the quality of a good goes up—say, a PC gets a better processor and more memory—its price can go up, too, without adding to inflation as measured by the CPI. “It’s a con,” wrote Bill Gross in 2004, claiming hedonic adjustments lowered annual inflation by as much as 1%.

The Fed prefers the PCE mainly because it responds to changes in spending habits more quickly than the CPI. The PCE tends to track the CPI, with a slightly lower rate of inflation.

The core PCE rose 2.6% in May—in line with expectations, and the lowest increase since 2021. Yields fell as some investors saw this as a sign the Fed may be ready to cut interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell shot that down, saying he first needed to be sure he’s getting “a true reading on what is actually happening with underlying inflation.”

Don’t we all.

Source: Barron's

Behind The Filipino Smile

Why do Filipinos, despite challenging situations, smile so easily and generously?

Like with many Filipinos, Sundays are sacred for our family.

Every week, my parents, sister-in-law, and two-year-old niece Yllize make the trip from the town in Bacoor where I grew up to the city where I now live to have an early lunch together. Walking to the spot where I usually meet them, I would see my niece already bobbing and moving her head as soon as the car stops. She would see me and break into a huge smile, a toothy grin that seems uncontainable as if wanting to burst from her face. It’s a sight that brings me joy that is unfortunately laced with sadness.

Last year, my brother, Yllize’s father, passed away suddenly, a loss that rocked our whole family and that which still echoes among us today. These weekly few hours together are meant to remind us of our bonds and for us to deal with our grief and move forward together; Sundays are sacred not because of mere religious tradition, but because they allow us to heal just a little bit every time.

My little niece, still blissfully unaware and uninformed of life’s many cruelties, continues to offer her smile generously, easily.

Our family’s situation, and the tendency to offer up a smile despite hardships, is not uncommon among us Filipinos. We do so openly that it’s become a distinguishing mark of our people. The vlogger Nas Daily mentioned this in his video 8 Days in the Philippines: “It’s so fun in the Philippines that if you go and ask random people to smile, they will smile back! Even security guards!”

While the idea of a foreigner randomly coming up to locals and demanding for them to smile does not make for comfortable optics, particularly coming from someone who has run into problems with Filipino culture in the past, it’s not entirely inaccurate.

The Filipino smile is offered generously and through constraints. Author and heritage advocate Felice Prudente Sta. Maria describes the Philippines as being “smile-rich.”

“Laughter and smiling are a pair during fiestas and celebrations. But Tagalogs have been known to insist that children learn to ‘Accept defeat with a smile.’ Cebuanos teach, ‘Smile even if it hurts.’ A stiff upper lip in response to misfortune and adversity does not seem to be a Filipino tradition. Instead, maintaining a smile is,” she says. “While historical records about Filipino smiling are elusive, it has been a practice over generations that Filipinos smile when they are happy, sad, angered, disappointed, unsure, and want to avoid direct confrontation.”

Smiling specifically through unpleasantness has become a particular Filipino trait. From the psychologist Dr. Rea Villa’s point of view, this is a form or aspect of positive psychology. She cites Harvard Health: “Positive psychology encourages people to tap into their inner strengths and connect with others; which in turn leads to gratitude and happiness.”

Villa, a senior psychologist for the mental health technology company Mind You, lists down several factors of Filipinos smiling through hardships: “First, the Philippines is a religious country we put our biggest trust in God or a higher being. Most of the time if things get rough and challenging we call to God for help, this gives Filipinos the comfort they need,” she says, adding that this gives us a feeling of having a sense of control despite the challenges we experience.

Given that the Philippines has the third largest Catholic population in the world, this isn’t surprising. “We accept the notion that all problems are tests of faith and conquering them is our supreme recompense,” writes Bong Osorio in his column for The Philippine Star in 2018. “This conviction is displayed in the many vibrant, well-attended city or town fiestas held all over the country in celebration of overcoming long and difficult ordeals and achieving positive outcomes attributed to God.”

The Filipino smile is offered generously and through constraints. Author and heritage advocate Felice Prudente Sta. Maria describes the Philippines as being “smile-rich.”

Perhaps the biggest example of a fiesta that was born out of a difficult ordeal is the Masskara Festival, which is celebrated in Bacolod. (The 162 square kilometer destination in the Northwest Coast of Negros is nicknamed “The City of Smiles” for its sweet-natured people.) On April 22, 1980, tragedy struck when the inter-island vessel MV Don Juan collided with a tanker in Mindoro’s Tablas Strait on its way to Manila. More than a hundred went missing that day while 18 people died, including members of prominent Negrense families.

The city was then already dealing with its once mighty sugar industry waning. The Don Juan tragedy placed an even bigger cloud of gloom over Bacolodnons’ heads.

What was the answer of the government? Then Mayor Digoy Montalvo appropriated a seed fund and gathered artists and creatives in the city to launch a “Festival of Smiles.” During this celebration, masks are worn by those participating in the parade, with each covering prominently displaying different kinds of smiles.

Today, it has evolved to become one of the biggest fiestas in the country. It is celebrated Rio de Janeiro- or Mardi Gras-style, filled with colorful parades and wild partying. In this way, as the original organizers intended it, the event shows that no matter how bad it gets, Bacolod and its people will overcome.

Resilient nation

Facing numerous challenges like inflation, disasters, lapses in government, and the like are par for the course of a still (after all these years and administrations) developing country. “I think these factors have caused us to adapt and be more flexible. We try to look at the brighter side of things; becoming hopeful that there are beautiful things ahead of us,” Villa says.

Take the short film The Invisible Monster, a jury award winner at the 2020 Festival Iberoamericano de Cortometrajes de ABC (FIBABC). It also nabbed the Best Actor trophy for its child-narrator Aminodin Munder. The film depicts the 2017 Marawi Siege, deemed the longest urban battle in recent history. Six years ago, the city found itself in the middle of a conflict that erupted between Philippine government security forces and militants affiliated with the Islamic State.

It went on for five months, leading to millions of pesos in structural damage and more than a thousand fatalities, and forcing scores of families to live in refugee camps. It was deemed the longest urban battle in recent history.

But still, as the film shows, the citizens of Marawi found a reason to smile. Even the young narrator Aminodin manages to exude joy and whimsy despite being surrounded by filth and decay everyday. The child is only seen cracking jokes among his friends, happily mimicking TV commercials and reveling in the curiosities he discovers at the dumpsites where he works. “My father says you must always smile because happy people live longer,” he says at the beginning.

But in the era of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, many won’t be able to see anything good out of this scenario. This same energy surfaced a few years ago when, after Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said that he was happy that only 45 percent of Filipinos were unemployed after COVID forced stringent lockdown measures to be put in place. He was “surprised at our resilience,” he said then.

That deference for politeness and resiliency can be occasionally viewed (and tagged by concerned citizens and armchair warriors alike) as toxic positivity. “Filipinos may maintain a positive outlook and find reasons to smile despite difficulties like hunger or natural disasters,” Villa explains. “Foreign nationals who are unfamiliar with the underlying causes of this behavior may find it puzzling.”

But many of our own people have pushed back at the idea of glamorizing hardships instead of demanding better leadership. As Frankie Pangilinan, the outspoken daughter of Senator Kiko Pangilinan, points out: “The over-romanticization of adaptability and resilience is supposed to make us okay with repeated abuse.”

For others

Since we belong to a “collectivist” country, Villa also points out that we rely mostly upon our kapwa (the Filipino sense of shared identity and of others), be it family friends neighbors, and even strangers. “Having the thought that whatever happens there would be someone to help us go through the pain is actually a great reason for many Filipinos to smile in the face of adversity,” she says.

Villa points out that this is a result of cultural values like reliance on the community and the conviction that they will always have someone to care for and support them. “The connections the Filipino people have and the understanding that they are not struggling alone give them strength,” she says. “They have hope and the capacity to keep a positive outlook despite adversity thanks to this support system.”

Kapwa, she continues, is crucial when discussing politeness and resiliency: “The feelings of other people and the effects of one’s actions are factors that Filipinos place high value on. This may result in circumstances where they choose politeness even when they risk being taken advantage of. Being overly accommodating or tolerating unfair treatment are occasionally consequences of the tendency to put others before oneself.”

Sta. Maria adds that interpersonal relations seek to develop the good kasama [companion], kaibigan [friend], and kapatid [sibling]. “To be a fine comrade requires mastering the art of smiling and understanding there is a difference between kangitian, a person with whom one is merely exchanging smiles in greeting, and nakuha sa ngiti, getting what one wants by using a smile,” she says. “The smile is powerful diplomacy.” The writer shares an Ilocano proverb: Ti isem saan nga gatgatangen, Ngem makaparnuay ragsak ken ginawa. Or, a smile is not bought, but it creates joy and well-being.

Villa however stresses that the potential drawbacks of being overly polite in this situation must be understood. Being polite and resilient might be perceived as admirable, but they should not be a tool for exploitation nor sacrifice a person’s well-being.

“For personal development and empowerment, it’s important to strike a balance between upholding positive attitudes and standing up for one’s rights,” the psychologist says. “As cliché as it may sound, self-care must come first. We can better care for others if we take care of ourselves. We need to know when to be gracious and resolute, as well as when to speak up, make our needs known, and stand up for our rights. Never should being polite entail tolerating abuse or holding back our true feelings and desires.”

Striking this balance, she continues, creates boundaries that shield us from exploitation, strengthen our sense of self, and protect our mental and emotional well-being. “It’s essential to keep a positive attitude while also speaking up for ourselves, establishing boundaries, and resisting any kind of exploitation or injustice,” she says. “Keep in mind that by caring for ourselves, we are better able to care for others.”

In her years of practice, Villa has found Filipinos to be highly motivated and inspired greatly by their families, with their actions and aspirations helping their kin to be better as a whole. “Every factor that we have as a person is directly connected to our family. When you ask a Filipino what the reason is that he/she is working you will almost get the same answer ‘Para sa pamilya ko’.”

In ancient, pre-colonial times, motivations for smiling seemed more centered on the self. In 1617, Sta. Maria adds, Mateo Sanchez noted the Visayan mananusad who specialized in decorating teeth with gold inlays, pegs, and caps. “Examples are on display at Ayala Museum in Makati,” she says. “The gold ornaments would

glimmer and glitter in the sunlight when one smiled, just like heroes of epics such as the Manobo Ulahingan. A golden smile made a mortal appear mythic.”

Achieving “mythic” status might not be the concern of many today. These days, the other is more emphasized. That is to say, as with many Filipino values and concepts, our smile is layered in its unique and healing duality; it is inherently individual and collective. Like kapwa, hiya, respeto, tuwa, it is both the one and the whole, the citizen and the community, my niece’s and a grieving city’s, yours and ours.

Source: Vogue

240 men started Magellan's voyage around the world. Only 18 finished it.

As it moored under Seville’s imposing skyline on September 8, 1522, the Victoria may not have stood out as anything exceptional among the bustle of Spanish ships arriving from the Americas. When 18 men stepped off board, “leaner than old, worn-out nags,” as one of them later recalled, they stepped into the history books as the first people to have sailed entirely around the world.

It had been a brutal voyage, led by the brilliant, if ruthless, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. When they set out from Seville, three years before in summer 1519, they were a crew of 240 manning five ships. A series of blows—including starvation, illness, mutiny, executions, and the death of their leader—decimated their numbers and their fleet before returning to Spain.

These men had, however, completed their global journey, despite the violence and greed that marred it from the outset. The venture would be remembered for the skill and endurance of many of its members. As the first Europeans to enter the eastern Pacific, the expedition radically altered Europe’s understanding of the world, while posterity would lionize Magellan for an accomplishment that he never lived to see.

Despite the aura of heroism that has formed around Magellan, his voyage was not driven by geographic curiosity, but by trade and Spain’s struggle to surpass Portugal. Following Christopher Columbus’s voyages of the 1490s and the discovery of a landmass to the west, the two premier naval powers competed to control the new vistas opening before them. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI drew a line from north to south down the Atlantic, decreeing that Spain could exploit the new continent to the west. The papal bull did not specify, however, that Portugal could exploit the territory to the east of the line. 

Portugal cried foul, pointing out that the pope, a Borgia of Spanish descent, was not an impartial arbiter. To avoid a war, direct talks opened between Portugal and Spain and the line was moved farther west in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. This allowed Portugal more room to maneuver down the eastern coastline of Africa. Happily for the Portuguese, Pedro Álvares Cabral’s 1500 discovery of the eastern coastline of South America fell on Portugal’s side of the 1494 line.

Portugal had already bested Spain in the exploration race, when in 1497 Vasco de Gama was the first European to discover a sea route to India around Africa. While this period of global exploration is often associated with the Americas, both powers were also seeking riches in the Asia-Pacific. It was there that Magellan gained experience vital to his later expedition.

A sea change

Born Fernão de Magalhães in northern Portugal in 1480, Magellan grew up in a noble family. At age 10 he was sent to Lisbon to train as a page in the court of Queen Leonora. He came of age as Europe began shaking off its medieval sensibilities and looking outward. The few sources on his early life suggest he became fascinated with maps and charts, an interest that may have coincided with the news, at age 13, of the Spanish expedition under Columbus that had made landfall in the Americas.

Portuguese eastward expansion began to move rapidly after Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. By 1505 the 25-year-old Magellan was with the Portuguese fleet heading around the Cape, and up the other side, to East Africa. The aim of King Manuel of Portugal was to wrest control of the entire Indian Ocean from the Arabs so as to control trade with India.

In 1507 Magellan participated in a naval battle that consolidated Portuguese power over the Indian Ocean. More Portuguese victories followed in Goa (western India), and in 1511 the Portuguese seized Malacca on the Malay Peninsula. The city overlooks the strait through which the spices from modern-day Indonesia were funneled westward. By controlling Malacca, Portugal could exert control over the spice trade.

An older relative (and possible cousin) of Magellan, Francisco Serrão, had also forged a dramatic career as a sailor and took part in the seizure of Malacca before going on an expedition to the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in 1512. His venture would later inspire Magellan’s own goal to reach them by sailing west from Europe.

Magellan took part in the battle for Malacca and honed his navigational skills during Portugal’s eastern victories. After returning to Europe, in 1514 he entered into a bitter dispute with King Manuel over the king’s refusal to reward him. Having used up all his appeals, Magellan rejected his native land and traveled to the Spanish court at Valladolid in 1517 to offer his services to the Spanish king Charles I (who would become Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in June 1519). From that day, Fernão de Magalhães would be known by his Spanish name, Fernando de Magallanes.

By offering his services to Spain, Magellan was not engaging in any truly scandalous behavior. Seafaring expertise often crossed borders, and crews were drawn from different nations. Columbus too, a Genoan from northern Italy, had offered himself to the Spanish crown after initially working for the Portuguese. Magellan’s plan was strikingly similar to Columbus’s from nearly 30 years earlier: to sail west to bring back spices from the Moluccas, the Spice Islands of Indonesia. 

Citing the theories of other navigators at the time, Magellan postulated that a strait cut through the Americas to a sea whose eastern shore was first glimpsed by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513. If he could find it, this passage would allow Spain a kind of “back-door” access to the Moluccas, bypassing Portugal’s Cape route. Magellan’s reputation as a sailor and his knowledge of the east convinced Charles, and the expedition received royal assent.

Not all were happy that this Portuguese interloper had gained such favor with the king. The nobility and the Casa de Contratación (the state body that controlled such expeditions) took every opportunity to obstruct Magellan’s preparations. Under two-thirds of the crew were Spaniards; of the foreigners, 24 were Portuguese and 27 were Italian.

Marvels and mutiny

Among the crew was a young Venetian nobleman named Antonio Pigafetta, a student of astronomy and geography. Pigafetta’s lively journal became history’s principal written source for detailed information on the entire voyage.

“On Monday, August 10, St. Lawrence’s day, the fleet, having been supplied with all the things necessary for the sea, made ready to leave the harbor of Seville,” Pigafetta recorded in his log. Five ships in total—the San Antonio, the Concepción, the Victoria, the Santiago, and the flagship, the Trinidad—struck out west from Spain via the Canary Islands. Pigafetta’s observations were not solely nautical. He took a lively interest in geography and zoology and science, noting different kinds of birds and wildlife.

While Pigafetta wrote his log, Magellan was deeply concerned about his authority. He was officially the supreme commander, but prior to departure, pressure from the Spanish authorities had forced him to accept a nobleman, Juan de Cartagena, as the voyage’s second-in-command. This decision led to violent power struggles during the voyage. Early on, Magellan was forced to arrest and demote Cartagena for insubordination. As a royal appointee, he was otherwise untouchable, but his resentful presence would prove nearly catastrophic for Magellan later.

The coast of modern-day Brazil, which Europeans had only been aware of for 20 years, was a source of wonder. But it was its inhabitants that captured Pigafetta’s attention most. He recorded in his journal that some of the people of “Verdin” (as he called it)

live a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and forty years, and more; they go naked, both men and women. Their dwellings are houses that are rather long . . . [and] in each of these houses . . . there dwells a family of a hundred persons, who make a great noise. In this place they have boats, which are made of a tree, all in one piece, which they call “canoo.” These are not made with iron instruments, for they have not got any . . . Into these thirty or forty men enter. 

Pigafetta’s writings revealed a condescending attitude toward the indigenous peoples. His descriptions of the peoples he meets in Patagonia, the Pacific Islands, and lands in Asia are centered on the amount of clothing worn, physical traits including skin color, height, and build, and whether they could be converted to Christianity. He recorded certain words from their languages, many of which related to commodities that could be of use to colonial Spain.

The small armada sailed south, scanning for any strait or opening in the great landmass to starboard. A great inlet in early 1520 aroused much excitement. Once it had been ascertained it was not the longed-for strait, but a river mouth (the Río de la Plata), the fleet continued south to San Julián, where, in April, surrounded on all sides by the frozen expanse of Patagonia, a full-scale mutiny was launched against Magellan by the captains of the four other ships.

Played out across five vessels, the scenes were chaotic and confusing, but Magellan prevailed. In the ensuing skirmishes, the rebellious captains of the Victoria and the Concepción were arrested and executed. One of the leaders of the revolt was the demoted and resentful Juan de Cartagena. Magellan opted to maroon him on an island, thus avoiding shedding the blood of a powerful nobleman, while also ridding himself of an incompetent troublemaker. Cartagena’s fate is unknown, but other mutineers were pardoned, including one of the officers, Juan Sebastián Elcano.

Shortly after the failed mutiny, as resentments still simmered, Magellan lost the Santiago in a storm. Unbowed, the reduced fleet continued south until glacial conditions forced a halt for two months to provision; then it set out once more. Finally, as Pigafetta records on “the day of the feast of the eleven thousand virgins,” St. Ursula’s Day which falls on October 21, they sighted a strait “surrounded by lofty mountains laden with snow... Had it not been for the captain-general, we would not have found that strait, for we all thought that it was closed on all sides.”

For over a month, buffeted by storms and currents, the fleet ventured down the strait that Charles V would later name for Magellan. The commander named an archipelago they saw on the south side Tierra del Fuego (“land of fire”) in reference to the many bonfires lit there by its indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples, who had occupied this tip of South America for millennia.

In the course of this passage, another ship disappeared: the San Antonio. Pigafetta records it had been believed lost; in fact, it had deserted and was returning to Spain. Equipped now with only three vessels, Magellan and his men “on Wednesday, November 28, 1520, . . . debouched from that strait, engulfing . . . in the Pacific Sea.” They were the first Europeans to enter that vast ocean from its eastern shore.

Hard crossing

After being borne northward along what is today the Chilean coast, Magellan’s fleet finally struck out northwest in search of land beyond. Magellan knew that the Malay archipelago he had visited years before must lie somewhere to the west. To find it, the limping expedition had to sail through rough seas for over three months.

Hunger and disease stalked the crossing. Pigafetta records how he and his crewmates ate sawdust, ox hides, and “biscuit, which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms, and which stank strongly of the urine of rats.” General privation, the lack of food, and illness greatly reduced their numbers. Perhaps the most devastating was scurvy, the distinctive symptoms of which Pigafetta captured: “[I]t was that the upper and lower gums of most of our men grew so much that they could not eat, and in this way so many suffered, that nineteen died.”

Savaged by scurvy

While crossing the Pacific, Pigafetta recorded how many of Magellan’s crew seemed to waste away from a horrific illness: Their gums bled, their limbs ulcerated, and delirium addled their minds. Scurvy and its symptoms, which are caused by a lack of vitamin C, would ravage many European expeditions. The captain who completed the Magellan expedition, Juan Sebastián Elcano, succumbed to scurvy on a later voyage, and it killed an estimated two million sailors between the 15th and 18th centuries. The medical properties of vitamin C were not discovered until the 1920s, but it became common wisdom in the 1700s that citrus fruit could be a preventative, a remedy that was resisted by some in the British Navy. It was not until the 1790s that fruit was distributed routinely among crews. 

On March 6, 1521, after 100 days in Pacific waters, the exhausted armada finally was able to make landfall in the Mariana Islands where they restocked the ships and then continued west. Days later, they reached an archipelago (later christened the Philippines by another Spanish explorer) of many inhabited islands that Magellan would attempt to claim for Spain. The crew celebrated mass on the island of Limasawa in late March and then converted the rulers of Cebu Island to Christianity.

Magellan heard that rivals of the Becu who lived on the nearby island of Mactan refused to convert and submit to Spain. Magellan tried to claim their land for Spain and their souls for the church, but the occupants of Mactan Island, led by the chieftain known traditionally as Lapulapu, stood firm in the face of Spanish guns and swords. On April 27, 1521, Magellan led 60 men to the island with an ultimatum to surrender. The islanders refused, and a fierce battle ensued, which Pigafetta recounted:

When we reached land we found the islanders fifteen hundred in number . . . they came down upon us with terrible shouts . . . seeing that the shots of our guns did them little or no harm [they] would not retire, but shouted more loudly, and . . . at the same time drew nearer to us, throwing arrows, javelins, spears hardened in fire, stones, and even mud, so that we could hardly defend ourselves. 

Pigafetta reported that Magellan was killed by Lapulapu and his warriors on the shore. Despite Spanish firepower, the islanders quickly overcame the invaders with their numbers and bravery and drove them back. The Europeans retreated, leaving their commander to die on the beach; Magellan’s body was never recovered. Later, the king of Cebu would turn against the Europeans, too, and kill 26 of them. The remaining Europeans soon departed.

Their numbers dwindling, the surviving crew, under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano, did finally reach the Moluccas in November 1521. They were able to stock up the ships with spices and goods to bring back to Spain. Having been forced to abandon two of their three remaining ships, the crew would return to Spain in a fleet of one—the Victoria. Ten months later, the ship and its bedraggled crew of 18, including Pigafetta, entered Seville’s harbor.

Final frontier

The first continuous circumnavigation of the world was complete. It took almost exactly three years and, surprisingly, turned a profit. The 381 sacks of cloves brought back by the Victoria were worth more than all five ships that had set out on the voyage. Despite the hopes and funds invested, it did not translate into immediate meaningful economic benefits for Spain. The treacherous course around the tip of South America was never a practical route for trade with the Moluccas.

Despite the death and destruction brought on by the voyage, many historians believe Magellan’s expedition was a worthy accomplishment. The careful records kept by Pigafetta and others dramatically expanded Europe’s knowledge of the world beyond the Atlantic, giving cartographers a firm sense of the world’s actual size and future navigators intelligence on the conditions and currents of the Pacific Ocean. Europeans had known of the eastern shore of the Pacific since 1513, but Magellan revealed its sheer size and power, knowledge that transformed Europeans’ understanding of the extent of the globe.

Source: National Geographic