History
Treaty of Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494 between Spain and Portugal to divide the newly discovered lands outside Europe. The treaty established a line of demarcation, giving Spain the right to explore and colonize the lands west of the line, while Portugal had the same rights to the lands east of the line. This treaty helped to avoid conflicts between the two countries over their territorial claims.
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5 Key excerpts on "Treaty of Tordesillas"
eBook - PDF- Wilhelm G. Grewe, Michael Byers(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
As a result of this deviation from the first demarcation, a considerable part of the then unknown South American continent, Brasilia, fell into the Portuguese sphere. However, in 1494 the importance of this agreement was far from having been recognised. Twelve years later, on 24 January 1506, the Tordesillas Treaty was confirmed by the Ea quae edict of Pope Julius II. 15 In order to understand the genesis of these acts, which were concentrated into a remarkably short span of time (three of them occurred on one and the same day), one has to recall the political and legal situation which formed the background to the conference of Barcelona. According to Staedler, the Spanish did not call into doubt the monopoly on discovery that the popes had conveyed upon the Portuguese. Columbus himself had turned to Lisbon before entering the service of the Spanish crown. Before his first departure, Madrid had expressly instructed him to keep 100 leagues away from the Portuguese possessions in Africa. Moreover, the Portuguese were as willing as the Spanish to come to an agreement. Given the weakness of their posi-tion on the continent and confronted with a militarily much more powerful neighbour, they could not risk a complete break. As Staedler explained, the rulers of Spain, »as the most obedient children of the Holy See« (as they were referred to by the Spanish jurist Herrera) 16 and in view of the widely recog-13 Staedler, »Die westindischen Investituredikte Alexanders VI«, op cit. note 9, p. 327, fn. 7. 14 Davenport, op cit. note 1, Vol. I, p. 84 ff. 15 Ibid., p. 107 ff. 16 Antonio de Herrera, Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas i tierrafirmas del mar Oceano (Madrid, 1601), p. 51 a. The Formation of a Territorial Order in the Age of Discoveries 235 236 The Law of Nations in the Spanish Age nised legal position of the Portuguese, sought a similar infeodation of their own overseas possessions.
eBook - PDFThe Power of Projections
How Maps Reflect Global Politics and History
- Arthur Jay Klinghoffer(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
Spain strongly endorsed the bulls and sent Columbus westward on a second voyage of “discovery” only four 62 The Power of Projections months later. Continuing differences were then reconciled in the June 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. The dividing line was moved 14 degrees westward (more than six hundred miles) in order to satisfy Portugal, which may have coveted fishing rights east of Newfoundland. Spain was permitted to retain lands “discovered” prior to July 1494 in the area it was relinquish- ing. Columbus was still on his second voyage, but he in fact had not found new territories for Spain covered by this temporary waiver clause. Probably The Tordesillas Line Completing the Circle 63 unbeknownst to both Spain and Portugal, part of what came to be Brazil lay within Portugal’s zone. Actual landfall in Brazil most likely did not take place until 1500 when Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral arrived there accidentally after being blown off course on his way to India. 27 The Treaty of Tordesillas, based on maps rather than a globe, inferentially assigned lands throughout the world to Portugal and Spain. The zones extending from the partition line in the Atlantic had no limit, and theoreti- cally would therefore meet again somewhere on the opposite side of the earth. However, the Pacific Ocean had not been explored by Europeans, and no line was established there 180 degrees from the one in the Atlantic. The two Catholic monarchies were granted the rights to empire, but they were later challenged by Protestant powers such as England and the Netherlands that didn’t accept the provisions of Tordesillas. Portugal’s explorations eastward became involved with our erstwhile mythical figure, Prester John. After much of the Mongol Empire had become Islamic in the thirteenth century, the prospect of finding a Christian ruler in Asia was remote. No sizable Christian community had even been detected in India, where St.
eBook - PDFFrom Hierarchy to Anarchy
Territory and Politics before Westphalia
- J. Larkins(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
The Spanish were granted the freedom and authority to “take corporal possession of the said islands and countries and hold them forever, and to defend them against whosoever may oppose.” 76 This blatant declaration of Spanish interest, which effectively nullified Portuguese rights over any further discoveries, displeased João who insisted that the line be extended further to the west. After a period of intense diplomatic maneuvering an agreement was reached between the two crowns and confirmed by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Under its terms the signatories agreed that “a boundary or straight line be determined and drawn north and south, from pole to pole, on the said ocean sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic pole. This boundary or line shall be drawn straight . . . at a distance of Renaissance and International Society ● 189 three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.” All islands and main-lands, known or to be discovered, to the east of the line “shall belong to, and remain in the possession of, and pertain forever to” the King of Portugal and his heirs while those to the west shall belong to Spain. 77 Both sides agreed not to send ships into each other’s sphere of influence with the specific purpose of discovering land and accepted that any accidental discoveries must be passed to the rightful owner. Although lip service was paid to the traditions of religious oaths—the parties swore not to violate it “before God and the Blessed Mary and upon the sign of the Cross, on which they placed their right hands and upon the world of the Holy Gospels,” and it was agreed that pope would be asked to con- firm and approve it by issuing a bull—Tordesillas dispensed with the rhetoric of proselytization and conversion that is so marked in Inter Caetera. The sole stated purpose of the agreement was the “sake of peace and concord” between the two kingdoms.
eBook - PDFTerritory, Globalization and International Relations
The Cartographic Reality of Space
- J. Strandsbjerg(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
However, it was not only Christian cosmological conventions that were challenged; the recently (re)discovered authority of Ptolemy would also have to be amended in order to make space for a continent that no template had previously allowed for. Direct expe- rience and observation thus became the sources of assembling a new knowledge of the world. The requirement to keep up-to-date with con- tinuous expanding geographical horizons in the Americas was a central challenge. As discussed, the ability to return was key, and in order to do that, the Spanish state set up large scale institutional systems to create a 102 Territory, Globalization and International Relations more controlled and comprehensive attempt to establish a fully global image of space following the years after the Treaty of Tordesillas; an exercise described by Cosgrove as ‘oceanic globalism’ which ‘altered both Europe’s imperial vision and its constructions of humanity’ (2003: 80). This was a matter of filling in the unknowns and correct- ing the content of the abstract global image. Not surprisingly, mapping initially focused on coastline mappings, thus drawing the contours of the discoveries. Subsequently, more orchestrated efforts would be made to ‘fill-in’ the contours by establishing topographical knowledge of the claimed territories. Both the Spanish and the Portuguese authorities established institu- tions to keep track of the new spatial knowledge very soon after the settlement of Tordesillas. As the globe had been politicized, it was urgent for both sides to obtain as accurate an image as possible. In response they both established ‘master maps’ which assembled all the disparate pieces of information that had been obtained, primarily, from returning captains. The Padreo Real and the Padron Real were, respectively, the mas- ter charts of the Casa de Mina in Lisbon and the Casa de Contratación in Seville.
eBook - PDFInfidels and Empires in a New World Order
Early Modern Spanish Contributions to International Legal Thought
- David M. Lantigua(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
97 The establishment of forts and settlements beginning with La Navidad, but also including La Isabela, Santo Toma ´s, Magdalena, and Santo Domingo, were essential to the civilizing process of living alongside natives. Spanish belief that God had commissioned them to make a new Christian civilization according to their image sanctioned possession of the Indies in the strongest possible terms. Pope Alexander VI’s apostolic intervention in 1493 assigning the Spanish Crown the right to evangelize and impart good customs on those inhabitants of the discovered lands granted an authoritative gravitas to the civilizing mission. In order to clarify the sovereign transatlantic domain of Spain from Portugal, the Pope conceded Spain “the full and complete liberty to take physical possession of the indicated islands and lands . . . to retain them in perpetuity, and to impede any adverse force, and to defend them .” 98 Although any political action contrary to apostolic authority on the matter was subject to the threat of excommunication, the papal bulls of donation were a ratification of the Iberian civilizing mission well underway. When Spain and Portugal in 1494 established the Treaty of Tordesillas identifying exclusive zones of sover- eignty and trading across the Atlantic independent of the papacy, the political signal was loud and clear. The Tordesillas Treaty further illustrated that in the New World the Pope was a post facto formal notary to a civilizing project led by secular power. Pope Julius II confirmed the Catholic treaty between Spain and Portugal in his 1506 bull Ea quae. Two years later, Julius’s Universalis ecclesiae gave Ferdinand and his successors a perpetual right to establish religious institutions and make ecclesiastical appointments in the Spanish New World. 96 Columbus, “December 16 (1492),” pp. 101–102. 97 Ferna ´ndez-Armesto, 1492, p. 197. 98 Pope Alexander VI, Dudum siquidem (September 26, 1493), in Shiels, King and Church, p.
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