Treaty of Tordesillas
Spain and Portugal divided the unexplored world between them by treaty at Tordesillas on 7 June 1494, drawing a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands and assigning everything east of it to Portugal and everything west to Spain. The occasion was Columbus's return in 1493. Ferdinand and Isabella went straight to Pope Alexander VI — a Spaniard — who issued bulls granting them the new lands and setting a line 100 leagues west of the Azores. John II of Portugal rejected it. He had spent decades and a fortune working down the African coast, Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape in 1488, and the papal line threatened the sea route to India he was about to complete. He negotiated directly with Spain instead of appealing to Rome. The 370-league figure was Portugal's demand and Spain conceded it, probably without understanding what it gave away: the line falls through what is now eastern Brazil, and Pedro Álvares Cabral made landfall there six years later. Whether the Portuguese already suspected land was there is argued and unresolved. The treaty's defect was that longitude could not be measured. Nobody could say where the line actually fell, and the argument became acute at the other side of the world, where the Moluccas lay near the antimeridian. Magellan's voyage was mounted on the claim that they fell in Spain's half. Spain sold its claim to Portugal at Zaragoza in 1529. France, England and the Netherlands never accepted any of it. Francis I asked to see the clause in Adam's will dividing the world.
- Year: 1494 CE
- Category: Political
