It was June of 1494, and two empires—Spain and Portugal—sat down to carve up a world they did not own.
They called it the Treaty of Tordesillas, a gentleman’s agreement written in ink and ambition, somewhere west of the Cape Verde Islands. The line they drew—an invisible stroke across the Atlantic—was supposed to bring peace. But what it brought was dominion.
To the west of that line, Spain claimed everything: the Caribbean, the Americas, the dreams and bones of millions. To the east, Portugal laid its hands on Africa, India, the spice routes—and later, Brazil, the lone Lusophone in a continent of Spanish tongues.
It was a theological geometry, blessed by Pope Alexander VI, who anointed Spain with bulls and benedictions. But this treaty was not divine—it was political theology, empire cloaked in the language of righteousness. It solved a European quarrel by pretending the rest of the world was unpeopled, a blank canvas waiting for flags.
The people already there—the Arawak, the Tupi, the Kongo, the Yoruba—they were not consulted. They were not even considered. In the eyes of the treaty, they were shadows cast by the sun, soon to be scattered by the cross and the sword.
The Treaty of Tordesillas did not merely divide land. It divided history. It redrew the world in the image of greed and gave it the scent of sanctity.
