历史小径·世界史英语精读30篇（4）

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《托德西利亚斯条约》及其制图遗产

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