Welcome to the MedLibrary.org Wikipedia Supplement on Enrique of Malacca -- Please Click to Return to Front Page

Part of a series on
Slavery
Early history
Aztec slavery · History of slavery Kholop Ancient Greece Rome Antiquity Medieval Europe Spanish New World colonies Thrall
Religion
Christianity and slavery · Islam and slavery Judaism and slavery · The Bible and slavery
By country or region
African slave trade · Atlantic slave trade Arab slave trade · Coastwise slave trade Angola · Britain and Ireland Brazil · Canada India · Iran Japan · Libya Mauritania · Romania Sudan · British Virgin Islands United States Swedish slave trade
Contemporary slavery
Debt bondage · Forced prostitution Sexual slavery · Slavery in modern Africa Wage slavery · Unfree labour
Opposition and resistance
Abolition of slavery timeline Compensated emancipation First Servile War List of notable opponents of slavery‎ Slave rebellion · Slave narrative

Enrique of Malacca was a native of the Malay Archipelago. In the firsthand account of Antonio Pigafetta he was named "Henrich" (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=philamer;cc=philamer;q1=Henrich;rgn=full%20text;idno=afk2830.0001.033;didno=afk2830.0001.033;view=image;seq=189;page=root;size=s;frm=frameset) and was enrolled in the official records as "Enrique". "Enrique de Malacca" is an appellation given by Magellan scholars and navigation historians. Malaysian literary works of the 20th century refer to him as "Panglima Awang", which is the title of a historical novel written in 1958 by Harun Aminurrashid. His name is mentioned only in Pigafetta, Magellan's Last Will, and the muster roll, and nowhere else.

Contents 1 Captured, not bought 2 Language and role as interpreter 3 Imagined Cebuano Ethnicity 4 Malay, lingua franca in SEA, spoken by Mazaua king Siaiu 5 Stefan Zweig inspired Quirino brainstorm 6 Massacre plot 7 Enrique after May 1, 1521 8 Possibility as the first circumnavigator 9 References 9.1 Footnotes 9.2 Bibliography 10 See also 11 External links

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 not bought which is a notion based on hearsay evidence, the secondary testimony of Maximilianus Transylvanus who was first to assert that, "Magellan had a slave, born in the Moluccas, whom he had bought in Malacca. (See Magellan's Voyage, edited by Lord Stanley of Alderley, page 200, at http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=sea;view=toc;idno=sea061). From this hearsay statement the notion has been repeated by historians in total disregard of Magellan's written testament. 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) It's possible, although this is speculative, he was one of the defenders of Malacca when the Portuguese sacked it in 1511; Enrique may have thereafter become a slave of the conquering Portuguese. Or, equally possible, he may have been already a slave owned by Sultan Mahmud of Malacca or by some rich member of the royal class or the merchant class of the time.

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.

Language and role as interpreter

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. Ginés de Mafra explicitly states in his account Enrique was brought along in the expedition primarily because of his native tongue. "He [Magellan]," wrote de Mafra, "told his men that they were now in the land he had desired, and sent a man named Heredia, who was the ship's clerk, ashore with an Indian they had taken, so they said, because he was known to speak Malay, the language common to those parts." (For full text of Chapter XI of de Mafra's relation where is found go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gin%C3%A9s_de_Mafra#Chapter_XI.2C_which_deals_with_what_transpired_after_Magellan.27s_departure_from_the_Ladrones_islands.)

The island in the Philippines where he spoke and was first understood by the natives was not Cebu. It was the island port of Mazaua. (Go to page 113 of Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. I, no. 33, at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=philamer&cc=philamer&idno=afk2830.0001.033&q1=Mazaua&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=119) 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. (This is fully discussed in the paper of Vicente C. de Jesus at http://www.xeniaeditrice.it/mazaua.pdf)

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 and more unequivocably and most explicitly in de Mafra's, 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, at http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=sea;view=toc;idno=sea061)

Pigafetta identifies the above interpreter as a "merchant from Ciama [presumably Siam or Thailand and just as possibly Champa], 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, click http://books.google.com/books?id=RB4usvtAZrEC&pg=PP1&dq=Antonio+Pigafetta&ei=YjU1Sc6KAorUkwTZ_ITbAQ#PRA1-PA75,M1)

Imagined Cebuano Ethnicity

Carlos Quirino, the first to talk of Enrique being from Cebu arrived at his hunch based on a number of purely imagined, fictitious incident. The first time he revealed to the world his notion Enrique was from Cebu was in a "lecture" before an academic community at the premier University of the Philippines. The slim article is remarkable for the absence of any footnote and citation of authority. There is a snippet view of his Enrique de Cebu assertion at http://books.google.com/books?id=T9UVAAAAMAAJ&q=Enrique+de+Malacca&dq=Enrique+de+Malacca&lr=&ei=l4M3SaOmOZCIkATT1YTOBQ&pgis=1. Quirino, who is not a linguistics expert, fails to cite any authoritative opinion that contradicts the universal belief Malay was widely spoken, especially among merchants and traders, in the Southeast Asian region before, during, and even after the entry of Europeans in the area.

In a later 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. 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.

Stefan Zweig inspired Quirino brainstorm

Quirino cites Stefan Zweig almost exclusively his one authority for the Enrique de Cebu brainstorm. Here is the passage in Zweig's biographical work Conqueror of the Seas -- The Story of Magellan which inspired Quirino's fairytale that has beguiled and waylaid many otherwise better-thinking writers and historians like Laurence Bergreen and William Manchester: "Now came the wonder. The islanders surrounded Enrique chattering and shouting, and the Malay slave was dumbfounded, for he understood much of what they were saying. He understood their questions. It was a good many years since he had been snatched from his home, a good many years since he had last heard a word of his native speech. What an amazing moment, one of the most remarkable in the history of mankind. For the first time since our planet began to spin upon its axis and to circle in its orbit, a living man, himself circling that planet, had got back to his homeland. No matter that he was an underling, a slave, for his significance lies in his fate and not in his personality. He is known to us only by his slave-name of Enrique; but we know, likewise, that he was torn from his home upon the island of Sumatra, was bought by Magellan in Malacca, was taken by his master to India, to Africa, and to Lisbon; travelled thence to Brazil and to Patagonia, and, first of all the populations of the world, traversing oceans, circling the globe, returned to the region where men spoke a familiar tongue. Having made acquaintance on the way with hundreds and thousands of peoples and tribes and races, each of which had a different way of communicating thought, he had got back to his own folk, whom he could understand and who could understand him." (Go to Page 234 of digitized Zweig at http://books.google.com/books?id=tLoWg9mMh04C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Stefan+Zweig&lr=&ei=TTY1SYeoG5LikwSqo5iaAw#PPA234,M1)

Quirino quotes Zweig but quite conveniently excised the portion that says Enrique was from Sumatra! Which indicates Zweig believed Pigafetta who wrote Henrich was from Sumatra (go to http://books.google.com/books?id=RB4usvtAZrEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ferdinand+Magellan&ei=5aBMSbOwHZrqkQTr7-zsBw#PPA67,M1).

Massacre plot

There is no definitive evidence as to whether 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.

Enrique after May 1, 1521

What came of Enrique? The Genoese Pilot states in his account that Enrique had died in Mactan. According to The Genoese Pilot when the fleet reached Carpyam, i.e. Quipit in Pigafetta, the Europeans "had no interpreter, for he had been killed with Fernan de Magalhaes." ( See Page 14, http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=sea;view=toc;idno=sea061) 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 Enrique 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 massacre. And everything that has been written of his activities after that day are in the realm of pure fiction.

Possibility as 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

• BERGREEN, Laurence. 2003. Over The Edge of The World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe. New York.

• BLAIR, Emma Helen and ROBERTSON, James Alexander. 1901-1907. The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, 55 vols. Cleveland. Abbreviated BR in citations.

• GENOESE PILOT. 1519. Navegaçam e vyagem que fez Fernando de Magalhães de Seuilha pera Maluco no anno de 1519 annos. In: Collecção de noticias para a historia e geografia das nações ultramarinas, que vivem nos dominios Portuguezes, ou lhes sao visinhas. Lisboa 1826. Pp. 151-176.

• DE JESUS, Vicente Calibo. 2004. Mazaua, Magellan's Lost Harbor, at [1]

• MAFRA, Ginés de. 1543. Libro que trata del descubrimiento y principio del Estrecho que se llama de Magallanes. Antonio Blazquez y Delgado Aguilera (eds.) Madrid 1920. Pp. 179-212.

• MANCHESTER, William. 1993. A World Lit Only By Fire, The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance. Boston.

• MAXIMILIAN Transylvanus. 1523. De Moluccis insulis. In: The First Voyage...Filipiniana Book Guild. Manila 1969: Pp. 103-130.

• MORISON, Samuel Eliot. 1974. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages 1492-1616. New York.

• PARR, Charles McKew. 1953. So Noble a Captain: The Life and Times of Ferdinand Magellan. New York.

• PIGAFETTA, Antonio. 1524. Various editions and translations:
  • —1524a. Magellan’s Voyage, Vol. II. Facsimile edition of Nancy-Libri-Phillipps-Beinecke-Yale codex. New Haven 1969.
  • —1524b. Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo, ossia ragguaglio della navigazione...fatta dal cavaliere Antonio Pigafetta...ora publicato per la prima volta, tratto da un codice MS. Della biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano e corredato di note da Carlo Amoretti. Milan 1800.
  • —1524c. Il primo viaggio intorno al globo di Antonio Pigafetta. In: Raccolta di Documenti e Studi Publicati dalla. Commissione Colombiana. Andrea da Mosto (ed. and tr.). Rome 1894.
  • —1524d. Le premier tour du monde de Magellan. Léonce Peillard (ed. and transcription of Ms. fr. 5650). France 1991.
  • —1524e. Magellan’s Voyage, 3 vols. James Alexander Robertson (ed. and tr. of Ambrosian). Cleveland 1906.
  • —1524f. Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation. R.A. Skelton (ed. and tr. of Yale ms.). New Haven 1969.
  • —1524g. * of Ms. fr. 5650 and Ambrosian ms.). London 1874.
  • —1523h. The Voyage of Magellan: The Journal of Antonio Pigafetta. Paula Spurlin Paige (tr. of Colínes edition). New Jersey 1969.
  • —1524i. Il Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo Con Il Trattato della Sfera. Facsimile edition of Ambrosian ms. Vicenza 1994.
  • —1524j. The First Voyage Around the World (1519-1522). Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (ed. based on Robertson’s tr.) New York 1995.
  • —1524k. Pigafetta: Relation du premier voyage autour du monde...Edition du texte fraçais d’après les manuscripts de Paris et de Cheltenhan. Jean Denucé (text transcribed from Ms. 5650, collating Mss. Ambrosiana, Nancy-Yale and 24224 in notes.) Anvers 1923.
• QUIRINO, Carlos. 1980-1995. "The First Man Around the World Was a Filipino." In: Philippines Free Press, December 28, 1991. --"Pigafetta: The First Italian in the Philippines." In: Italians in the Philippines, Manila: 1980. -- "Enrique." In: Who's Who in the Philippines. Manila: Pp. 80-81. All three articles at [2]
• RAMUSIO, Gian Battista. 1550. La Detta navigatione per messer Antonio Pigafetta Vicentino. In: Delle navigationi e viaggi…Venice: Pp. 380-98.

• TORODASH, Martin. 1971. “Magellan Historiography.” In: Hispanic American Historical Review, LI, Pp. 313-335.

• ZWEIG, Stefan. 1938. Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellan. New York.

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

See also

• Henry (Enrique) interpreter of Magellan
• Battle of Mactan
• De Moluccis Insulis

External links

• Yale notes on Pigaffetta
• Notes on Pigafetta, Mazua, Ginés de Mafra another seaman of Magellan
• First circumnavigator
• Spanish PDV Enrique de Malacca
• Malayan words recorded by Antonio Pigafetta
• Sugbo Sa Karaang Panahon, Cebu-Online.com, retrieved on: 13 June 2007
• Radio Sejarah. Melayu: Enrike of Melaka - Was the First Man to Sail Around the World A Malay?, retrieved on 13 June 2007

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 1 January 2009, at 21:54.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Enrique of Malacca".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Enrique_of_Malacca

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.