The treaty signed by Portugal and Spain dividing up the new world - the entire world it seems - between the two.
Other European powers would challenge them of course, including England. Indogenous populations also pushed back though less successfully.
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The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in Tordesillas, Spain, on 7 June 1494, and ratified in Setúbal, Portugal, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile, along a meridian 370 leagues (1,281 mi; 2,062 km) west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. That line of demarcation was about halfway between Cape Verde (already Portuguese) and the islands visited by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Castile and León), thought then to be Cipangu and Antillia, but in fact Cuba and Hispaniola; the treaty itself does not mention Cipangu or Antillia.
The lands to the east would belong to Portugal and the lands to the west to Castile, modifying an earlier bull by Pope Alexander VI. The treaty was created on 7 June 1494, then ratified by Spain on 2 July 1494, by Portugal on 5 September 1494, and by Pope Julius II on 24 January 1506. The other side of the world was divided a few decades later by the Treaty of Zaragoza, signed on 22 April 1529, which specified the antimeridian to the line of demarcation specified in the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portugal and Spain largely respected the treaties, while the Indigenous peoples of the Americas did not acknowledge them.
Dear ChatGPT: What impact did the Treaty of Tordesillas have on european settlement of the new world?
Overall Historical Significance
The Treaty of Tordesillas was one of the most consequential diplomatic agreements in world history because it:
- Prevented immediate conflict between Spain and Portugal over overseas expansion.
- Enabled Spain and Portugal to build the first global colonial empires.
- Led to the Portuguese colonization of Brazil.
- Concentrated Spanish settlement across most of the Americas.
- Accelerated Catholic missionary activity in the New World.
- Established patterns of language, religion, and law that continue to shape the Western Hemisphere.
- Prompted England, France, and the Netherlands to develop alternative legal justifications for overseas colonization, laying the groundwork for later competition and the eventual settlement of much of North America.
