What is treaty of tordesillas

All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice. Oxford Reference. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. All lands east of that line about 46 degrees, 37 minutes west were claimed by Portugal.

All lands west of that line were claimed by Spain. Spain and Portugal adhered to the treaty without major conflict between the two, although the line of demarcation was moved an additional leagues about kilometers or miles farther west in , which enabled Portugal to claim the eastern coast of what is now Brazil.

The results of this treaty are still evident throughout the Americas today. For example, all Latin American nations are predominantly Spanish-speaking countries with the sole exception of Brazil where Portuguese is the national language. This is because the eastern tip of Brazil falls east of the line of demarcation settled upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, and was where the majority of Portuguese colonization occurred. The borders of modern Brazil have expanded since the expansion of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Spain and Portugal were the only signatories of the treaty because at the time, they were the only European powers to establish a presence in the Americas.

The treaty did not consider any future claims made by the British, French, and other European superpowers of their respective times. More significantly, however, the Treaty of Tordesillas completely ignored the millions of people already living in established communities in the Americas. Of course, by that time, Christianity had not spread broadly in the Americas. This meant that unless the land was already claimed by a Christian European ruler, by the terms of their treaty, Spain and Portugal could claim practically any land they managed to conquer in the Americas.

The resulting conquest and colonization proved disastrous for civilizations, such as the Inca, Taino, and Aztec, along with thousands of other communities throughout the Americas.

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The Treaty of Tordesillas was in effect for almost years, with the exception of to when the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united. It was superseded in the second half of the Eighteenth Century, by the Treaty of Madrid in and finally the Treaty of San Ildefonso in By Carlos Madrid.

Davenport, Frances Gardiner, ed. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Treaty of Tordesillas Cantino planisphere depicting the meridian, Treaty of Tordesillas. Moreover, even though there is no formal evidence, a number of indications suggest the possibility that the Portuguese already knew of the existence of land in the South Atlantic in The new agreement allowed them to guarantee sovereignty over what would become Brazil, which was officially discovered in Although the arrangements in the Treaty of Tordesillas resolved Atlantic disagreements, they also fuelled other difficulties.

In the early s, the Portuguese set foot on the Moluccas archipelago, which was a clove producing area. The Spanish challenged their right to establish themselves there, considering that the Treaty of Tordesillas had divided the earth into two hemispheres, and that the archipelago was located in their part. The ensuing years saw skirmishes opposing the Portuguese and the Spanish over possession of the Moluccas, due to the impossibility of determining the anti-meridian corresponding to that of Tordesillas.

It provided for the determination of a demarcation line passing In the end, the Portuguese hemisphere was approximately degrees, and the Spanish one degrees, a practically equal division into two demispheres.