Treaty of Tordesillas

The Treaty of Tordesillas was an agreement between the Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal, signed at Tordesillas in Spain on 7 June 1494 and ratified at Setubal in Portugal, that divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the two powers. Its line of demarcation was a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, so that lands to the east would belong to Portugal and lands to the west to Castile. The line sat roughly halfway between Cape Verde, already Portuguese, and the islands reached by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage. The treaty modified an earlier papal bull of Alexander VI and was negotiated without consulting him. Spain ratified it on 2 July 1494, Portugal on 5 September 1494 and Pope Julius II on 24 January 1506. The opposite side of the world was later divided by the Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529. The two crowns largely respected the treaty, while the Indigenous peoples of the Americas never acknowledged it. It was declared void by the Treaty of Madrid of 1750 and annulled by the Treaty of El Pardo in 1761. UNESCO added the treaty to its Memory of the World register in 2007; originals are kept in Spain and Portugal.