Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

by Laurence Bergreen

for Magellan to display a map likely purloined from Portugal was the equivalent of selling nuclear secrets at the height of the Cold War.

Fear was his most important means of motivating his men; they became more afraid of Magellan than the hazards of the sea.

The modest yet historic encounter between the Armada de Molucca and a few dozen outrigger canoes contained in microcosm the conflicting impulses of the European colonialist adventure—from initial innocence and curiosity through confusion, fear, and bloodshed, all of it resolving in commercial activity.