历史小径·世界史英语精读30篇（4）
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The Treaty of Tordesillas and Its Cartographic Afterlife
《托德西利亚斯条约》及其制图遗产
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Signed in 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided newly encountered lands between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagues west of Cape Verde.
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Though negotiated without input from Indigenous peoples or rival powers, it became a reference point for European territorial claims across three centuries.
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Cartographers incorporated the line into world maps—not as precise measurement but as symbolic assertion of papal and monarchical authority over geography.
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Portuguese expansion eastward into Brazil followed the line’s southern extension, inadvertently legitimizing occupation of lands outside initial intent.
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Spanish navigators used it to contest Portuguese presence in the Moluccas, leading to the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza and complex jurisdictional overlaps.
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Colonial administrators later invoked the treaty to justify land seizures, even where indigenous sovereignty remained unchallenged on the ground.
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Its ambiguity—especially regarding longitude accuracy—created loopholes exploited by Dutch and English traders operating outside Iberian alliances.
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By the 18th century, Enlightenment mapmakers critiqued it as obsolete, yet diplomatic archives still cited it during boundary negotiations in South America.
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Modern historians treat it less as binding law and more as a lens into how spatial imagination shaped imperial legitimacy.
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Its enduring presence in school textbooks reflects how cartographic decisions can outlive their political utility and enter collective historical memory.