Frontiers of Possession

Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas

Tamar Herzog

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780674735385
• eBook ISBN: 9780674745186
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Frontiers of Possession asks how territorial borders were established in Europe and the Americas during the early modern period and challenges the standard view that national boundaries are largely determined by military conflicts and treaties. Focusing on Spanish and Portuguese claims in the New and Old Worlds, Tamar Herzog reconstructs the different ways land rights were negotiated and enforced, sometimes violently, among people who remembered old possessions or envisioned new ones: farmers and nobles, clergymen and missionaries, settlers and indigenous peoples.

Questioning the habitual narrative that sees the Americas as a logical extension of the Old World, Herzog portrays Spain and Portugal on both sides of the Atlantic as one unified imperial space. She begins in the Americas, where Iberian conquerors had to decide who could settle the land, who could harvest fruit and cut timber, and who had river rights for travel and trade. The presence of indigenous peoples as enemies to vanquish or allies to befriend, along with the vastness of the land, complicated the picture, as did the promise of unlimited wealth. In Europe, meanwhile, the formation and re-formation of boundaries could last centuries, as ancient entitlements clashed with evolving economic conditions and changing political views and juridical doctrines regarding how land could be acquired and maintained.

Herzog demonstrates that the same fundamental questions had to be addressed in Europe and in the Americas. Territorial control was always subject to negotiation, as neighbors and outsiders, in their quotidian interactions, carved out and defended new frontiers of possession.

PART I

Defining Imperial Spaces: How South America Became a Contested Territory

THE TERRITORIAL CONFLICT between Spain and Portugal regarding the extension of their overseas domains was as ancient as the European expansion. In 1493, shortly after Columbus returned from his first voyage, the Catholic monarchs secured two papal bulls (Inter Caetera) that entrusted them with the duty to convert Native Americans in return for certain rights in territories discovered west of a meridian passing one hundred leagues off the islands “vulgarly called the Azores and Cabo Verde” (two island groups in the Atlantic). Because at that time Spain’s only viable rival for maritime expansion was Portugal, the following year the monarchs signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, confirmed by the pope in 1506, in which they agreed that a different meridian (this time passing 370 leagues to the west of the Cabo Verde Islands) would separate their respective zones of influence.¹ Lands not belonging to Christians that were already discovered or that would be discovered to the east of this meridian would be Portuguese; to the west, Spanish.

Although this agreement seemed clear, in the decades and centuries following its adoption, its implementation provoked constant debate. The first time the issue was seriously tested was in the early sixteenth century, when the two monarchs disagreed as to who had the right to discover and possess the Moluccas, a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean (presently in Indonesia).² At stake was the factual question of who discovered and possessed these islands first, but the conflict also required determining (1) whether the meridian set in Tordesillas encircled the globe, thus establishing the rights of Spain and Portugal not only in the Atlantic but also in the Pacific; and (2) if this was the case, whether the Moluccas were located east or west of the meridian and were thus in Spain’s or Portugal’s sphere of expansion.³ The decision to extend the treaty to the Pacific provoked no conflict, but the question of whether these islands were east or west of the meridian proved impossible to resolve. Juridically, the parties would have to agree on how to interpret the term “the Cabo Verde Islands,” coined in Tordesillas. Did the signing parties intend to measure the meridian from the most central point of this archipelago (as Spain would eventually claim) or from its most westward point (as Portugal would insist)? But even if the parties could settle this point (which they did not), they still needed to identify the exact location of the Moluccas in relation to this line. This, too, was a highly debated scientific issue at a time when neither the shape nor the size of the earth, nor the location of territories, was consensual.

In 1524, experts summoned to examine these questions and give their opinion as to whether, according to Tordesillas, the Moluccas should be Spanish or Portuguese failed to agree. In the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), the Spanish king consented to sell the Moluccas, which he insisted were his, to the Portuguese, who continued to consider them their own.⁴ Although the conflict ended in a compromise, the questions it raised remained unresolved. Both sides continued to argue that the Moluccas were theirs, and both were aware of the fact that this affirmation was important. After all, at stake was not only, not even mainly, what happened in the Pacific but what would transpire in the New World.

The question of how Tordesillas would be interpreted and implemented arose again in the 1530s, when the two courts disagreed whether the territory known as River Plate (present-day Argentina and Uruguay, perhaps even Brazil) was to be Spanish or Portuguese.⁵ This conflict, which was highly theoretical at this stage because neither Spain nor Portugal was capable of capitalizing on its claims, died on its own. Nonetheless, it was a bitter reminder that nothing was settled and nothing agreed. Hopes for a peaceful solution reemerged in 1580, when Philip II of Spain became king of Portugal. In the aftermath of this “union,” many believed that the conflict between the two powers was resolved automatically because the same monarch ruled both countries. This, at least, was the a posteriori Spanish version, which insisted that, because the right to land and jurisdiction were royal, as long as the two kingdoms shared the same ruler, confrontation was impossible.⁶ Whether this analysis was juridically correct or not (I will return to this point), in the eighteenth century Spaniards insisted that during the sixty years in which Spain and Portugal were united (1580–1640), the Treaty of Tordesillas was “forgotten,” perhaps even annulled.⁷ Some even claimed that, as a result, during that period the respective rights of Spain and Portugal could be determined only according to the Inter Caetera, the 1493 papal bulls that set a meridian, which was more favorable than Tordesillas to Spain. Others asserted instead that the territories of both countries were de jure separated but de facto indistinguishable. These claims were rejected by those who argued that during the union the Treaty of Tordesillas remained in force and Spain and Portugal remained separate. According to this last version, mainly upheld by Portuguese interlocutors, because the risk for confusion was greater during the union, it was particularly important for contemporaries to determine which territory belonged to whom.⁸ But regardless of who was right and who wrong, it is clear that the dispute reemerged as soon as the kingdom of Portugal separated from Spain (in December 1640). According to Spanish complaints, as early as 1641, Portuguese troops invaded Spanish holdings in Omaguas (present-day Peru). In the Amazon region, the seventeenth century saw Portuguese soldiers and settlers attacking Spanish missions, arguing they were established illegally on Portuguese soil. In the River Plate, Spaniards conquered the Portuguese settlement of Colonia de Sacramento (in present-day Uruguay) which, according to them, was located on Spanish ground.⁹ As in the 1520s, experts convened in 1681 and 1682 to decide whether Colonia was to the east or the west of the meridian set in Tordesillas disagreed, thus leaving the question of how to implement Tordesillas open while also encouraging both sides to attempt to gain by force what they could not gain by consensus.¹⁰ Thereafter, the heartland of South America became a battleground. Portuguese from the east, Spaniards from the west, and ecclesiastics from both sides penetrated the interior with the aim of taking hold of both territory and its resources, people included. Because over time European penetration became more intense, by the late eighteenth century the dispute expanded dramatically to include territories that are presently part of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The Treaty of Utrecht (1715), the Treaty of Madrid (signed 1750, canceled 1761), the Treaty of Paris (1763), and the Treaty of San Idelfonso (1777) all attempted to settle these differences.¹¹ However, the issues they raised remained unsolved until the end of the colonial period, and they continued to haunt Latin American states long after their independence.

The question of which territory belonged to whom concerned European courts. It called for diplomatic negotiations and the signing of successive treaties, as well as the occasional war. Yet, while the story of courts has been studied extensively, most historians rarely asked how individuals and groups challenged one another in continuous and quotidian discussions over the extension of their land. These debates, focusing not on the rights of kings or even countries but instead directed at knowing who could take which routes and where fruits could be collected, huts constructed, mines discovered, and Indians subjugated, took place on the contested territory as contemporaries sought to accomplish certain tasks. Engaged in them were settlers, ecclesiastics, military men, governors, and natives who, confronted with the need to justify their activities, found themselves involved in affirming both who they were and what were the rights of their communities. Why they were required to engage in such conversations, when these took place, and what they said is the subject of the first part of this book, in which I argue that historians and politicians who looked to the past too often and too quickly assumed that the allegations made by early modern rivals represented the truth rather than claim making. Those favoring the Spanish stand (or wishing to benefit from it) reproduced the reports Spaniards sent to Madrid in order to convince the monarch to assist them in their quarrels, in which local actors portrayed themselves as passive observers of a continual Portuguese advance into Spanish territories.¹² Spaniards, they suggested, may have discovered many areas in the sixteenth century, but their failure to settle them allowed the Portuguese, who were better equipped and manned, to take hold of most. The Portuguese lived intrusively on the land. They deliberately ignored the commitments in the (many) treaties they had signed, and their behavior was treacherous, disloyal, and unacceptable. Since the seventeenth century, ambition had led them to appropriate vast regions in the American interior with an ultimate goal of creating a “powerful empire” (poderoso imperio) that would embrace the entire continent, including the rich mining districts of Peru.¹³ “Wishing to imitate the glory of Spain” (los portugueses siempre émulos de las glorias de España), their expansion was made possible by Spanish neglect (indolencia) and the insufficient attention Spaniards gave to territorial issues.¹⁴

These accusations, which were meant to capture royal attention rather than necessarily to represent the truth, also reflected Spanish bewilderment at Portuguese expansion, which was indeed short of spectacular. Having begun in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a few settlements along the Atlantic coast, the Portuguese gradually came to control (or pretend to control) a huge territory, dozens of times larger. Even if they were following their own interpretation of Tordesillas or the law, as they would often assert, how were they able to achieve what Spaniards could not? Yet, as historians justifying Portugal would remark, while the Spaniards accused the Portuguese of misbehaving, Portuguese interlocutors writing to their king presented Spain as an extremely powerful party that was likely to control soon the entire continent.¹⁵ According to them, Spaniards constructed new fortifications and missions in Portuguese territories, they controlled river navigation, and, alongside their Indian allies, they attacked Portuguese forts on Portuguese territory. Portraying Spaniards as violent intruders (intrusos), the Portuguese accused them of having “astute customs” (costumadas astúcias) and of displaying arrogance (soberbos). They also contended that Spanish claims to American territories were as malicious and ambitious (maliciosa ambição) as their pretension to rule Portugal. All attempts to reason with Spaniards failed because they either refused to listen or to be convinced. They gave peace treaties absurd interpretations and were violent, uncivil, and cruel. While Spaniards advanced into the interior, the Portuguese emulated crabs refusing to leave the shoreline.¹⁶

This exchange of accusations reached such a point that some Spaniards were willing to argue that the Portuguese were not only liars and traitors but also barbarians. Their lack of civility was clear in their refusal to observe the pacts they had made and to obey royal orders. Because of their behavior, they could be compared to infidels. Contravening the laws of human correspondence and ignoring Christian precepts, they conducted their affairs like the Ottoman muftis who “inculcated in the renegades of our faith [the] insane resolution of turning against their origin” or, even worse, they followed the teachings of Machiavelli.¹⁷ While Spanish interlocutors accused the Portuguese of infidelity, Portuguese correspondents suggested Spaniards were heretics.¹⁸ Like the Dutch, Spaniards attempted to take over territories belonging to Portugal and, also like the Dutch, they distorted known truths and their actions were both uncivil (incivil) and ambitious. They violated Christian precepts that instructed the faithful against coveting the property of another. Accusing each other of unruly behavior, both Spaniards and Portuguese presented themselves as vassals who respected the “law of nations” (derecho de las gentes/direito das gentes) and the treaties. Any other insinuation was slander or libel (calumnia or injuria) as they had always acted with “justice, equity and moderation” (justicia, equidad y moderación).¹⁹ Because the conquest of the Americas was achieved at great cost, it would be against natural law (derecho natural) as well as royal rights (regalía) not to defend it.²⁰

Linking incorrect political behavior to a faulty civility, as well as heresy, formed part of a repertoire that early modern individuals and communities employed to discuss legal violations. Though ordinary in some respects, it testified to the degree to which already in the early modern period the conflict between Spain and Portugal in the Americas was fashioned as a tale of right and wrong, good and bad. Reproducing the information archival sources included and adopting contemporary allegations as their own, historians and politicians writing in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries assumed that these documents reflected what was actually happening on the ground, never suspecting that they recorded instead juridical and political (sometimes phantasmagorical) assertions that were often problematic even as they were pronounced.

Rather than taking this road or attempting—as other historians have done—to describe the “proper” or “true” divisions between the two powers, in what follows I analyze how the legal and political situation forced itself on contemporaries who, in the process of legitimizing their particular activities, also created a space that they identified as their own. Their understanding of what was theirs, I argue, was perhaps structured by treaties or wars, but it depended principally on European traditions that assigned to them certain entitlements and on their relationship with the indigenous peoples.

1	European Traditions: Bulls, Treaties, Possession, and Vassalage

ALTHOUGH THE CRITERIA making a territory Spanish or Portuguese could vary by author, place, and time, most contemporary narratives mentioned two types of questions. The first involved several formal documents that suggested that in 1493 the pope gave Spain certain rights, that in 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas endorsed these (with some changes), and that subsequent treaties (1681, 1715, 1750, 1761, and 1777) either confirmed or undermined these arrangements. The second invoked legal doctrines which, originating in Roman law and developed in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, determined that title depended on possession.¹ How these two vastly distinct criteria—formal documents versus a juridical doctrine—interacted with one another was often unclear. Most parties of course claimed that their rights were based on bulls, treaties, and possession, but they disagreed on what happened, for example, when the bulls indicated a different solution than the treaties or when the treaties and occupation contradicted one another. The options as to how to treat such conflicts were diverse. Some argued that entitlements granted by bulls and treaties gave absolute title. Territories mentioned in them were Spanish or Portuguese if they were “discovered,” that is, founded and reached, no other action being required to make the land Spanish or Portuguese.² Others suggested instead that bulls and treaties only delineated spheres of potential expansion and that possession was always required to obtain title.³ This second interpretation called for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Defining Imperial Spaces: How South America Became a Contested Territory
• Part II: Defining European Spaces: The Making of Spain and Portugal in Iberia
• Conclusion
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index