Papal Bull sets limits on Hispanic possessions in America

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This day, Pope Alexander VI promulgated the Bull Inter Caetera “which established the line, from pole to pole, that should pass 100 leagues from the Azores and Cape Verde islands, so that the Portuguese would limit their conquests to the East of that line and the Spanish could spread to the West. The pope made the concession of such lands to Isabel and Fernando and all their heirs, the Kings of Castilla y León ”(Rodolfo Cananor. Patagonian Chronology).
This bull was complementary to the one signed the day before, which granted “Each and every one of the above-mentioned lands (America) … to you and to your said heirs and successors we invest them (…) with full and free and all-encompassing power, authority and jurisdiction”.
The purpose was to hand them over to the Kings of Spain so that they could lead “the peoples who live on these islands to receive the Catholic profession.”
With this background, in June 1494, the kings of Spain and Portugal signed “the Treaty of Tordesillas agreeing a demarcation meridian between the future possessions of both powers in the new western lands approximately in the current meridian 44 degrees west.” Ceding to the Portuguese the east of Brazil, Africa and Asia, consecrating the first division of the world, in this case with the papal endorsement.
This succession of diplomatic dispositions, accelerated for the rhythm of the political decisions of the time, originated from the importance acquired by the arrival of the expedition led by Christopher Columbus to the American beaches. The Genoese arrived on October 12, 1492, although the “astronomical and mathematical differences of the Julian calendar with the current Gregorian calendar” set the true date of landing in America on October 21, 1492 (Wikipedia).
This event was the spearhead of a series of transformations of geographical and scientific knowledge, of the development of world trade and consequently of primitive capitalist accumulation, the universality of access to books with the Gutenberg printing press, which it removed from the monopoly of the Church the dissemination of geographical, cultural, historical and literary knowledge.
This sum of phenomena shook the peaceful medieval society and opened the doors of scientific development, the Industrial Revolution, the end of absolutism and the beginning of the democratization of Western society.

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