Battle of Mactan

The Battle of Mactan (Cebuano: Gubat sa Mactan; Tagalog: Labanan sa Mactan; Spanish: Batalla de Mactán) was fought in the Philippines on 27 April 1521, prior to Spanish colonization. The warriors of Lapu-Lapu, a native chieftain of Mactan Island, overpowered and defeated a Spanish force fighting for Rajah Humabon of Cebu, under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in the battle.

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan (/məˈɡɛlən/ or /məˈdʒɛlən/; Portuguese: Fernão de Magalhães, IPA: [fɨɾˈnɐ̃w ðɨ mɐɣɐˈʎɐ̃jʃ]; Spanish: Fernando de Magallanes, IPA: [ferˈnando ðe maɣaˈʎanes]; c. 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer who organised the Castilian ('Spanish') expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano.

Born into a Portuguese noble family in around 1480, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer and was eventually selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands"). Commanding a fleet of five vessels, he headed south through the Atlantic Ocean to Patagonia, passing through the Strait of Magellan into a body of water he named the "peaceful sea" (the modern Pacific Ocean). Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition reached the Spice Islands in 1521 and returned home via the Indian Ocean to complete the first circuit of the globe. Magellan did not complete the entire voyage, as he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines in 1521.

Ferdinand Magellan, traveling west from Europe, in 1521, reached a region of Southeast Asia (the Malay Archipelago), which he had reached on previous voyages traveling east (from 1505 to 1511-1512). Magellan thereby achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history.

The Magellanic penguin is named after him, as he was the first European to note it. Magellan's navigational skills have also been acknowledged in the naming of objects associated with the stars, including the Magellanic Clouds, now known to be two nearby dwarf galaxies; the twin lunar craters of Magelhaens and Magelhaens A; and the Martian crater of Magelhaens.

Philippines Under Spanish Rule, 1571-1898

Miguel López de Legazpi’s (b. 1502–d. 1572) conquest of Manila in 1571 ushered in a 327-year epoch of Castilian rule in the Philippine Islands, but his actions also created unintended historical by-products that made the undertaking dissimilar to any other colony in the Spanish empire. Most notable were that the archipelago was located in Asia, it consisted of many islands inhabited by a variety of Malay and Austronesian peoples, and Chinese cultural and economic influences, which had been developing since at least the Tang dynasty, competed with Castilian/Mexican.