Treaty of Tordesillas: What was it?

He Treaty of Tordesillas Was a commitment signed in June 1494 by representatives of the Spanish and Portuguese royalty in the city of Tordesillas (Valladolid). It subscribed a distribution of the zones of navigation and the lands conquered by both countries.

From the time of Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), the goal of the Portuguese court was to reach India surrounding Africa. During the fifteenth century, the discoveries and conquests on African lands endorsed this objective.

Distribution of the world through the Treaty of Tordesillas

This began with the first important conquest of the Portuguese, Ceuta in 1415. Thanks to the fact that this territory was in its domain, in 1488 Bartolomé Días managed to touch the Cape of Storms (the southern tip of the African continent), known today As a Cape of Good Hope.

Thus the path to the land of spices was left open. This trip was first performed by Vaco da Gama (1469-1524). On April 15, 1498, the fleet of the famous arrived in Calicut (south-west coast of India) thus discovering the route of the southeast, then called route to the Indies by the Cape.

But six years before this voyage, the Castilians had already reached a world considered, in principle, Asian. This would cause conflicts between both Iberian states.

The Genoese Cristóbal Colón (1451-1506), dazzled by the geographical theories of Ptolemy, conceived the possibility of arriving at the Indies sailing towards the West. He presented his project to the Portuguese crown that considered it unfeasible. It was then to the court of Castile whose kings adhered to the project.

Through the Capitulations of Santa Fe, Catholic kings awarded Columbus the titles of"Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy of the lands he discovered, plus a tenth of the profits he could get."

After colonial, Spanish and Portuguese disputes the non-European lands were distributed through the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). The world was divided by an imaginary meridian located 370 leagues from Cape Verde, in two hemispheres.

The lands west of the meridian would belong to the Castilian crown and the eastern ones to the Portuguese. As the eastern outlying territory of South America was within the Portuguese scope, Portugal began the colonization of Brazil in 1500.

Treaty of Tordesillas: What was it? Map showing the line of demarcation between Spain and Portugal. Encyclopædia Britannica

History

In 1493, after knowing the reports of the discoveries of Columbus, the kings of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, went to the Pope to prevent Portuguese and other potential claimants from making claims on the lands of the New World.

The Spanish Pope Alexander VI, in favor of the kings of Spain, issued a series of bulls establishing a line of demarcation, from pole to pole, 100 leagues (approximately 320 kilometers), west of the islands of Cape Verde.

Spain received exclusive rights over all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line. The Portuguese expeditions had to be kept to the east of that line.

No other European power against the Atlantic Ocean willingly accepted this papal disposition nor the subsequent agreement derived from it. John II of Portugal was dissatisfied because he considered that the rights of Portugal in the New World were insufficient and that it had a maritime space to continue the voyages to Africa.

For these claims, the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors meeting in Tordesillas (northwest of Spain), although they reaffirmed the papal decision, they managed that the line moved to 370 leguas to the west of the islands of Cape Verde (around 46 ° 30W of Greenwich ). Pope Julius II finally sanctioned the change (1506).

The new limit allowed Portugal to reclaim the coast of Brazil, discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral (1500). The exploration of the Brazilian territories and the establishment to the west of the line of demarcation, in the following centuries, allowed to accommodate the claims of Brazil to enter in vast areas of the interior of South America.

Treaty of Tordesillas: What was it?  1 First page of the Treaty of Tordesillas

Signing of the treaty and application

The Treaty of Tordesillas was intended to resolve the dispute created after the return of Christopher Columbus of America, which as we remember had been sailing thanks to the kingdom of Castile. Returning to Spain, he arrived first in Lisbon, Portugal.

There he asked for another meeting with King John II to present the news about the newly discovered lands. The King of Portugal sent a threatening letter to Catholic kings stating that, by the Treaty of Alcaçovas (1479) ratified in 1481 by the papal bull Æterni regis, the crown of Portugal was guaranteed ownership over the territories located at South of the Canary Islands.

Therefore, all lands discovered by Christopher Columbus belonged in fact to Portugal. In addition, the Lusitanian king declared that he had already put in place a plan for a fleet led by Francisco de Almeida, to leave and take possession of the new lands. Once the letter was read, the kings of Spain realized that they had no military domination in the Atlantic to face the Portuguese.

They then devised an exit through diplomatic channels. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI (Spanish), released the bull Inter caetera Mentioned in point 2. Another package insert, Dudum siquidem , Entitled Extension of the Apostolic Donation and Donation of the Indies (September 25, 1493), granted to all Spain continental lands and islands that had belonged or belonged to India, even to the east of the line.

Reaction from Portugal

The Portuguese king John II was angry with the arrangement obtained by the kings of Spain. He considered himself stripped of most of the land and thus, it would be impossible to reach his goal: to take possession of India.

In 1493, Portuguese explorers had arrived in Cape Verde, southernmost of Africa. While Portugal was not inclined to go to war for the lands discovered by Christopher Columbus, India was a major issue, a state matter.

As the Pope made no change, the Portuguese king, to run the line westward and thus reclaim the newly discovered lands east of the line, appealed to direct negotiations with Ferdinand and Isabella.

In the deal, John II accepted the bull Inter caetera To begin the negotiation. The border line moved 270 leagues to the west, protecting the Portuguese route along the coast of Africa and granting them rights over the land portion of the present Brazilian territory to the east.

According to the specialist Parry (1973)"both parties should have thought that, as such a border could not be fixed with exact accuracy, the other part could easily be deceived. (...) It was then a diplomatic triumph for Portugal, confirming not only the legitimate route to India but also that which led to the South Atlantic.

Derivations

The treaty counteracted the bulls of Alexander VI, but was later sanctioned by Pope Julius II through the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis (January 24, 1506).

The reality is that at the moment the Europeans had no notion of field, since the resolutions had been reached by means of treaties. Castile gained many lands including most of the Americas, even without knowing the wealth they would receive.

The easternmost part of the present territory of Brazil was granted to Portugal when in 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral made foot, on the way to India. Some historians claim that the Portuguese already had an idea of ​​the extension of the South American territory that makes up most of Brazil, so it is possible to assume that the arrival in Brazil was not accidental.

Parry (1973) writes about the Cabral landing on the Brazilian coast, 12 ° further south than the expected Cape São Roque:"The probability of having landed in the wrong place as a result of bad weather or due to navigation error , Is remote. Most likely, Cabral was ordered to investigate a coast whose existence was not only suspected but already known."

Stocks from Spain

The dividing line was not strictly applied, the Spaniards did not oppose Portuguese expansion in Brazil. What they tried to do was to halt the advance of Portugal in Asia, arguing that the meridian line ran around the world dividing it in half and only taking into account the Atlantic Ocean.

Portugal resisted and sought another papal pronouncement that would limit the line of demarcation towards the Atlantic. Pope Leo X, who showed an inclination towards Portugal and his discoveries, pronounced himself in favor with the bull Praecelsae devotionis , In 1514.

During the period between 1580 and 1640, the treaty lost meaning, since the Spanish king was also king of Portugal. At that time, it was replaced by the Treaty of Madrid of 1750, which granted Portugal control over the lands it occupied in South America.

This last treaty was immediately repudiated by the Catholic monarch. Consequently, the first treaty of San Ildefonso solved the problem and Spain stayed with territories east of the Uruguay River And Portugal with territories in the Amazon Basin.

The emerging Protestant maritime powers, particularly England and the Netherlands, and Roman Catholic France, did not recognize this division of the world, only between two Roman Catholic nations, typed by papal authority.

The effect on other European powers

The treaty was historically relevant because of the way Latin America was divided in the Western Pacific until 1898. However, the treaty lost its validity in North America, and later in Asia and Africa, because it affected colonization, and also by other nations European countries.

With the decline of Spanish and Portuguese power, the countries of origin could not sustain many of their demands, nor could they expand them in areas still unexplored. Thus, any European state was able to colonize virgin territories, or those weakly run by Lisbon or Madrid.

With the fall of Malacca (Malaysia) into the hands of the Dutch, the VOC (Dutch East India Company) took control of Portuguese possessions in Indonesia, naming New West and Western Australia as New Holland.

Eastern Australia remained in the middle of the world belonging to Spain until James Cook claimed it for England in 1770.

Contemporary Claims

The Treaty of Tordesillas was invoked by Chile in the 20th century to defend the principle of the Antarctic sector along a meridian towards the South Pole, and to affirm that the treaty did not contemplate all undiscovered lands towards the South Pole.

Indonesia took possession of West New Guinea in 1960, justifying the action by stating that the Majapahit Empire had included western New Guinea and forming part of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

The Treaty of Tordesillas was also invoked by Argentina in the 20th century as part of its claim to the Falkland Islands.

References

  1. Encyclopedia Britannica. Treaty of Tordesillas.
  2. Treaty of Tordesillas. Retrieved on 7/1/2017 at wikipedia.org.
  3. Parry, J.H. (1973). The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450-1650. London: Cardinal. P. 194. ISBN 0-297-16603-4.
  4. Helen Blair, ed. The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Cleveland, Ohio: 1903). Frances Gardiner Davenport, ed., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1917), 107-111.
  5. Crow, J.A. (1992). The Epic of Latin America (4th Ed). University of California Press. P. 136. ISNB 0-520-07723-7.
  6. Miller, James Rodger (2000-06-01). Skyscrapers hide the heavens: the history of Indian-white relations in Canada. P. 20. ISBN 9780802081537. Retrieved on 7/1/2017 at wikipedia.org.
  7. "National Interests and Claims in The Antarctic"(PDF). Retrieved 7/1/2017.
  8. Majapahit Empire. Java, Indonesia. Laver, Roberto (2001). The Falklands / Malvinas case. Springer. Pp. 67-69. ISBN 978-90-411-1534-8. Retrieved on 7/1/2017 at wikipedia.org.


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