In one generation, 1486-1522, the two little powers of the Iberian Peninsula had extended their sway over the seas until they embraced the globe. The way had been prepared for this unparalleled achievement by the courage and devotion of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who gave his life to the advancement of geographical discovery and of Portuguese commerce. The exploration of the west coast of Africa was the school of the navigators who sailed to the East and the West Indies, and out of the administration of the trade with Africa grew the colonial systems of later days.
In the last quarter of the fifteenth century the increasing obstructions in Egypt and by the Turks to the trade with the East Indies held out a great prize to the discoverer of an all-sea route to the Spice Islands. Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama solved this problem for Portugal, but the solution offered to Spain by Columbus and accepted in 1492 revealed a New World, the Indies of the West.
The King of Portugal, zealous to retain his monopoly of African and eastern exploration, and the pious sovereigns of Spain, desirous to build their colonial empire on solid and unquestioned foundations, alike appealed to the Pope for a definition of their rights and a confirmation of their claims. The world seemed big enough and with a spacious liberality Pope Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella the right to explore and to take possession of all the hitherto unknown and heathen parts of the world west of a certain line drawn north and south in the Atlantic Ocean. East of that line the rights of Portugal, resting on their explorations and the grants of earlier popes, were confirmed.
The documentary history of the Philippines begins with the Demarcation Bulls and the treaty of Tordesillas, for out of them grew Magellan's voyage and the discovery of the islands; and without them the Philippines would no doubt have been occupied by Portugal and later have fallen a prey to the Dutch as did the Moluccas.
King John of Portugal was dissatisfied with the provisions of the Demarcation Bulls. He held that the treaty between Spain and Portugal in 1479 had resigned to Portugal the field of oceanic discovery, Spain retaining only the Canaries; and he felt that a boundary line only a hundred leagues west of the Azores not only was an infringement on his rights but would be a practical embarrassment in that it would not allow his sailors adequate sea room for their African voyages.
His first contention was hardly valid; the second, however, was reasonable and, as Columbus had estimated the distance from the Canaries to the new islands at over nine hundred leagues, the Catholic sovereigns were disposed to make concessions. By the treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, it was agreed that the Demarcation Line should be drawn three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. [4] This treaty accepted the principle of the Papal arbitration but shifted the boundary to a position supposed to be half-way between the Cape Verde Islands and the newly discovered islands of Cipangu and Antilia. [5]
Neither in the Papal Bulls nor in the Treaty of Tordesillas was there any specific reference to an extension of the Line around the globe or to a division of the world. The arrangement seems to have contemplated a free field for the exploration and conquest of the unknown parts of the world, to the eastward for Portugal, and to the westward for Spain. If they should cross each other's tracks priority of discovery would determine the ownership. [6]
The suggestion of the extension of the line around the globe and of the idea that Spain was entitled to what might be within the hemisphere set off by the Demarcation Line and its extension to the antipodes does not appear until the time of Magellan, and it is then that we first meet the notion that the Pope had divided the world between Spain and Portugal like an orange. [7]
The Portuguese reached India in 1498. Thirteen years later Albuquerque made conquest of Malacca of the Malay Peninsula, the great entrepôt of the spice trade; but even then the real goal, the islands where the spices grow, had not been attained. The command of the straits, however, promised a near realization of so many years of labor, and, as soon as practicable, in December 1511, Albuquerque despatched Antonio d'Abreu in search of the precious islands. A Spanish historian of the next century affirms that Magellan accompanied d'Abreu in command of one of the ships, but this can hardly be true. [8] Francisco Serrão, however, one of the Portuguese captains, was a friend of Magellan's and during his sojourn of several years in the Moluccas wrote to him of a world larger and richer than that discovered by Vasco da Gama. It is probable, as the historian Barros, who saw some of this correspondence, sugguests, that Serrão somewhat exaggerated the distance from Malacca to the Moluccas, and so planted the seed which bore such fruit in Magellan's mind. [9]
The year after the Portuguese actually attained the Spice Islands, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, first of Europeans (1513), set eyes upon the great South Sea. It soon became only too certain that the Portuguese had won in the race for the land of cloves, pepper, and nutmegs. But, in the absence of knowledge of the true dimensions of the earth and with an underestimate of its size generally prevailing, the information that the Spice Islands lay far to the east of India revived in the mind of Magellan the original project of Columbus to seek the land of spices by the westward route. That he laid this plan before the King of Portugal, there seems good reason to believe, but when he saw no prospect for its realization, like Columbus, he left Portugal for Spain. It is now that the idea is evolved that, as the Moluccas lie so far east of India, they are probably in the Spanish half of the world, and, if approached from the west, may be won after all for the Catholic king. No appeal for patronage and support could be more effective, and how much reliance Magellan and his financial backer Christopher Haro placed upon it in their petition to King Charles appears clearly in the account by Maximilianus Transylvanus of Magellan's presentation of his project: "They both showed Caesar that though it was not yet quite sure whether Malacca was within the confines of the Spaniards or the Portuguese, because, as yet, nothing of the longitude had been clearly proved, yet, it was quite plain that the Great Gulf and the people of Sinae lay within the Spanish boundary. This too was held to be most certain, that the islands which they call the Moluccas, in which all spices are produced, and are thence exported to Malacca, lay within the Spanish western division, and that it was possible to sail there; and that spices could be brought thence to Spain more easily, and at less expense and cheaper, as they come direct from their native place." [10]