Monday, 02 July 2007

Have you ever wondered why South America was influenced by the Spanish and Africa by the Portuguese?


Have you ever wondered why South America was influenced by the Spanish and Africa by the Portuguese?
The whole exploration thing was driven by a desire to move spices from the East to modern day Western Europe. The Italians, who had a land route, monopolized the trade during the 1400’s. They were not interested in finding a sea route. Things were working well for them. The Brits were in the middle of an extended war with France and both countries had all their resources committed to this senseless activity. Germany was a collection of small feudal states, rattling shields and shaking spears at each other. The Dutch were also busy elsewhere else. The Scandinavians had no desire to get involved, anyhow, they had been in North America for a couple of hundred years already, and knew there were no spices there.
So, that left the Spanish and the Portuguese.
The Portuguese were happy concentrating their efforts sailing their way down the East coast of Africa. Then Columbus decided there was a way West to the East. And off he went, financed by the Spanish. No problem. Then the Portuguese found Brazil, rumour has it, by mistake, after a fleet was blown off-course by a fierce storm. A conflict of interests arose, as the Spanish were also in the neighbourhood.
So the two countries went off to the Pope for a ruling. This resulted in the Treaty of Tordesillas, which set a “Papal Line” at approx 40 degrees West of the Cape Verde islands, (1,550 kilometres). This was a line of longitude which stated that any lands to the West would be Spanish, and to the East Portuguese.
Now you know.

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