Which 1494 treaty shifted the Atlantic dividing line between Spain and Portugal?

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Which 1494 treaty shifted the Atlantic dividing line between Spain and Portugal? The Treaty of Tordesillas shifted it.

Signed at Tordesillas, Spain, on June 7, 1494, the treaty divided newly encountered lands outside Europe between the Crown of Castile and Portugal. It moved the proposed boundary to a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, farther west than the line set out in Pope Alexander VI's 1493 bull Inter caetera.

In broad terms, lands east of the line were assigned to Portugal and lands west to Castile. The arrangement was intended to prevent conflict after Columbus's voyage, though the treaty did not consult the Indigenous peoples whose territories it purported to divide.

The treaty is especially important because the line helped Portugal claim Brazil after Pedro Álvares Cabral reached its coast in 1500. A later Treaty of Zaragoza, signed in 1529, addressed the opposite side of the globe. The Treaty of Madrid, one of the wrong options, came much later, in 1750, and superseded Tordesillas.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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