Treaty of Tordesillas 1494: A Moved Line, Brazil and 350,000 Ducats

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Returning from his first voyage in 1493, Christopher Columbus stopped in Lisbon, and King John II of Portugal claimed the new lands under the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, threatening to send an armada under Francisco de Almeida. Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia of Valencia, drew a pole to pole line 100 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde in Spain's favor. John negotiated directly with Ferdinand and Isabella, and at Tordesillas in 1494 the line moved to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, officially to give Portuguese ships room for the Volta do Mar. The shift put eastern South America on Portugal's side, six years before Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil.

The treaty never defined a league or named which Cape Verde island to measure from, the joint survey voyage never sailed, and Jaime Ferrer's 1495 calculation relied on Ptolemy's oversized globe. The 1524 Conference of Badajoz ended without a settlement. After Magellan's voyage both crowns claimed the clove-growing Moluccas, and under the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza Portugal paid Spain 350,000 gold ducats for a line 17 degrees east of the islands. France, England and the Dutch ignored the division, Spain founded Manila in 1571 on Portugal's side, and the 1750 Treaty of Madrid replaced the line with uti possidetis.

• Cabral was supposedly 12 degrees off course, an error many historians find implausible.
• Portugal's policy of secrecy forbade navigators to share charts on pain of death.
• The 1502 Cantino map placed the line near a river mouth labeled as a sea of fresh water, likely the Amazon.
• After Zaragoza, Portugal held about 191 degrees of the globe and Spain about 169.
• Francis I of France demanded to see the clause in Adam's will that denied France a share of the world.