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Y205: Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445–1570

Encounters and conquest: Treaty of Tordesillas and Portuguese conquest

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  • Unit group 2

Overview

Recall questions on the Treaty of Tordesillas and Portuguese conquest: Albuquerque, Brazil.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What was the most important long-term consequence of the Tordesillas line?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    State what the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 laid down.

    Model answer

    Castile and Portugal agreed a north–south line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, with newly found lands to the west reserved to Castile and those to the east to Portugal.

  2. 2

    Why did Portugal press for Tordesillas after the papal grant of the previous year?

    Model answer

    Pope Alexander VI's award of 1493 drew the line only 100 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, which John II judged too close and damaging to Portugal's Atlantic sailing routes, so he negotiated the line further west.

  3. 3

    What was the most important long-term consequence of the Tordesillas line?

    Model answer

    It placed the eastern bulge of South America on the Portuguese side, giving Portugal a legal title to Brazil, and it excluded other Christian powers, a claim the French and English later refused to accept.

  4. 4

    Describe the character of Portuguese encounters on the African coast.

    Model answer

    They were mainly commercial rather than territorial: fortified trading stations such as Elmina bought gold, ivory, pepper and slaves from African rulers on terms those rulers largely controlled, and missionary contact produced the conversion of the king of Kongo.

  5. 5

    Why did the Portuguese meet hostility when they reached Asian waters?

    Model answer

    They arrived as armed intruders into an old and prosperous trading world, offering poor-quality goods, demanding privileges from rulers such as the Zamorin of Calicut, and threatening the Muslim merchants who already carried the spice trade.

  6. 6

    How did the Portuguese secure naval control of the Indian Ocean?

    Model answer

    Their gun-armed ocean-going ships defeated a combined Muslim fleet off Diu in 1509, after which they could impose the cartaz system requiring other traders to buy a Portuguese licence.

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