Iles Mariannes: Guam. 1&2 Stephan La…

When Ferdinand Magellan first discovered Guam and the Marianas in 1521, he named the islands the ‘Islands of Sails’ but soon renamed them the ‘Islands Ladrones’ (Island of Thieves) after a misunderstanding led to one of his ships, the Trinidad, being raided by a group of local Chamorro people who believed that they were engaging in a trade. Despite Magellan’s discovery of the island, Guam was not claimed for the Spanish until 1565 and subsequently became an important transit and supply port for the Manila galleons on their voyages between Manila and Acapulco. The first colonisation occurred in 1668 with the founding of a Catholic mission by the Jesuit Padre Diego Luis de San Vitores. Louis Claude de Freycinet visited the islands shortly after the halt of the Manila galleon trade due to the Mexican Revolution of 1815 and he wrote critically about the economic depression and poverty that had occurred as a result. Freycinet accomplished one of the most thorough scientific and historical studies of Guam of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, adding to existing historical accounts by interviewing the local Chamorro and Spanish people. He published the first hydrographic survey of all fifteen islands within the Marianas archipelago in 1826 after leading the famous Uranie voyage.