Magellan, Ferdinand

2007-03-18T10:51:18Z

Bolzano: removed unencyclopedic language

Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480 to a noble family in Sabrosa, Portugal. For the first thirty-nine years of his life, Magellan had a very adventuress life. First he sailed with Francisco De Almeida to India, then he served for ten years in the Portuguese army fighting seven years to secure trade in India, and then he fought against the moors in northern Africa for three years. During these ten years he received many wounds that left him partially lame for life. The Portuguese king Manuel refused to raise his pension and dismissed him from his service. This enraged Magellan so much that he went and offered his service to Charles, the king of Spain.

Magellan was one of the people who believed that there was a passage through the Americas that would enable ships to find a much faster way to the Indies. He and his partner Ruy Faleiro convinced the King of Spain that because of the treaty of Tordesillas, the Spice Islands were under Spanish dominion. Charles agreed to give Magellan Five ships for his quest: the Trinidad, the Victoria, the San Antonio, the Concepcion, and the Santiago.

Magellan then crossed the Atlantic and landed on the coast of Brazil. After sailing up and down the coast for a several months, Magellan’s fleet was forced to stop and winter in Patagonia. During the winter one of the ships was destroyed in a violent storm and a group of men mutinied, but when spring came Magellan was ready to sail.

Finally Magellan found a straight at 49.5 degrees south latitude. One of the ships mutinied rather than face the perils of navigating the straight, but the remaining three ships made it through safely. (These straights are now called “The straights of Magellan”) In March of 1521, after a long and difficult pacific crossing, Magellan reached Guam. He had accomplished his goal of sailing to the Spice Islands by sailing west.

Sadly, Magellan was killed in a skirmish with some natives when he was in the Philippines. This left one of the ships without an adequate crew, so it was burned. This left the Trinidad and the Victoria loaded with cloves, and on their way home. After sailing for some weeks, the Trinidad Sprung a leak, and the Victoria left for Spain without her. The Trinidad was captured by a Portuguese ship, and only four of her crew ever returned to Spain.

Finally when The Victoria came back to Spain, Her battered and bruised crew were heroes. They had done what no other group of men had ever done before, they had circumnavigated the globe.

Boer War

2007-03-17T20:57:47Z

Bolzano: spelling+grammar

The '''Boer war''' was fought between the British army and the two Boer (Dutch) republics in [[Africa]], the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, from 11 October 1899 until May 1902.

The war was caused by the treatment of British commercialists within the states, who were denied voting rights. This caused the mine owners and British nationals to pressure the authorities into toppling the Boer government. In addition the republics were an economic threat to the established British colonies in the region. An attempted coup backed by the Prime Minister of the Cape colony, Cecil Rhodes, failed, which let the Boers know that war was to follow.

In September 1899 the British Colonial Secretary Chamberlain issued an ultimatum demanding equal rights for the British within the republics. They retorted with an ultimatum of their own; if the British did not withdraw troops from the border within 48 hours they would declare war.

Initially the war was fought in the traditional style of pitched battles. Due to their expertise with the terrain and the disorganisation of the British the Boers were initially successful, launching offensives into the British colonies, however the immense capacity of the British Empire was brought to bear, and they were pushed back into their own states. The conflict then degenerated into a guerilla war. The British found that they could only control the territory they phyically occupied. But a mixture of new infantry tactics, fixed defences and the disillusionment of the native Africans with the Boers combined to end in the surrender of the Boer forces in May 1902 .

It officialy ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging, which gave the Boers approximately $5,700,000 to reconstruct and established the Union of South Africa, which was absorbed into the British Empire. The total number of casualties during the war was around 75,000, of which 22,000 were British soldiers, 7,000 were Boer soldiers, 25,000 were Boer civilians and possibly 20,000 black Africans. However the majority of the British casualties were as a result of disease and not through enemy fire.
{{stub}}

Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Magellan, Ferdinand

Boer War