On 20 September 1519, Ferdinand Magellan departed Spain with a fleet of five ships and a crew of less than 240 men, intending to reach the Orient by sailing westward around or through South America and across the largely uncharted expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Nearly three years later, on 6 September 1522, his successor, Juan Sebastián de Elcano, would return to Spain with a single ship, the Victoria, and the remnants of the expedition: eighteen Europeans and three East Indians. This first circumnavigation of the globe epitomized the contention between Portugal (Magellan's homeland, which spurned his plan) and Spain (which accepted) for dominion of the East Indies, and the difficulty of determining where lands such as the Moluccas lay in relation to the ideal Line of Demarcation established by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. The voyage also seized the imagination of European writers, prompting Francisco López de Gómara, for one, to proclaim: “Great was the navigation of Solomon's fleet, but greater was that of these ships of the emperor and king, Don Carlos. Jason's ship, the Argo, which [the ancients] set among the stars, sailed very little in comparison with the ship Victoria… . The wanderings, dangers, and travails of Ulysses were nothing in respect to those of Juan Sebastián” (Historia general de las Indias [1552]).

Among the best known accounts of the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation is that written ca. 1523–24 by Antonio Pigafetta, one of the eighteen Europeans aboard the Victoria at its return. As the subtitle added to the present edition suggests, Pigafetta attributes not only the idea but the achievement of a voyage around the world to Magellan alone, never once mentioning Elcano by name. This is but one among several curious lacunae in Pigafetta's work. Another is the function that Pigafetta himself performed as part of the expedition. For although he makes clear his desire to see the world and profit from the experience — “having obtained much information from many books that I had read, as well as from various persons, who discussed the great and marvellous things of the Ocean Sea … I determined … to experience myself and to see those things that might satisfy me somewhat, and that might grant me some renown with posterity” (3) — he never explains his duties or his value to the success of the mission. Nevertheless, the style and focus of his report, together with his machinations to use it to advance his social status and fortune, invite the conclusion that his interest was commercial. Pigafetta's writing is factual but not descriptive, consisting of actions, historical actors, place names, objects (especially commercial goods), word lists, folklore, illustrations depicting the shape and position of islands, and flora and fauna (again of commercial value), rather than of impressions, landscapes, or dramatic episodes. Commentary is minimal, serving primarily to explain political alliances, the elaboration of foods, clothing, and merchandise out of raw materials, and the performance of ceremonial acts such as how to bestow gifts and eat and drink properly. This is a work clearly intended to provide European traders with practical information for their future dealings in the East Indies.

This matter-of-fact focus and the resulting dryness of Pigafetta's narration often make for less than pleasurable reading, especially in the very literal translation of James A. Robinson, first published in 1906 and used in this edition. Although, by translating clause-by-clause and at times word-by-word, Robinson gives an “accurate portrayal of Pigafetta's prose style” (lviii), his effort to follow Italian syntax is not only jarring to English ears but also confusing because of the lack of gendered pronouns to make clear the antecedent in our language. An amusing example is: “the king wished before his departure to give the captain a large bar of gold and a basketful of ginger; however the latter thanked the king heartily but would not accept” (34). Grammatical lapses, the obscurity of terms such as debouched, tromb, and quire, and phrases such as “two windows opened with two brocade curtains, through which light entered the hall” (69) will also leave most readers to wish for a more modern, or at least more polished, translation.

Although not acknowledged by the editor or publisher, the present edition is a minimally revised reissue of a work released under the same title in 1995 (New York: Marsilio Publishers). It is therefore surprising and regrettable to find such a great number of editorial problems: errata; incorrect accents and misspellings in non-English words and names; inconsistencies in the names of places and historical figures (e.g., Juan Sebastián de Elcano is at times called “del Cano”); and no notes for non-English terms such as capitulación and cédula, or for unfamiliar measures such as the cubit, span, and league. These problems are particularly acute in the bibliography, where even the entries for Pigafetta and Cachey contain errata, and in the notes to the text, which often remit to one another incorrectly because of their renumbering from the original to the present edition.