When was the Treaty of Tordesillas signed?

It was signed on 7 June 1494 in the Castilian town of Tordesillas. It was ratified by Castile on 2 July and by King João II of Portugal on 5 September of the same year.

Where are the originals of the treaty kept?

The original copies are preserved at the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo, in Lisbon, and at the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville. The nomination to the Memory of the World Register was a joint one, submitted by Portugal and Spain.

Why is the Treaty of Tordesillas important?

It set a line of demarcation 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, dividing the lands yet to be discovered between the two crowns. That line would place a large part of the future Brazil within the Portuguese sphere.

Treaty of Tordesillas (Memory of the World)

The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on 7 June 1494, is one of the most decisive documents in modern history: in it, Portugal and the Crown of Castile agreed to divide between themselves the lands discovered and yet to be discovered beyond Europe. For its universal importance, it was inscribed in 2007 on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, in a joint Portuguese-Spanish nomination that recognised its documentary value, shared by the two countries and by the entire Iberian-rooted world.

A treaty that divided the globe

The agreement arose from the open rivalry that followed the return of Christopher Columbus in 1493 and from the need to avoid conflict between the two maritime powers. The bull Inter caetera, issued by Pope Alexander VI, had set a line of demarcation 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. King João II of Portugal, dissatisfied, negotiated directly with the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and managed to shift the line to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, drawn from pole to pole.

Everything east of that meridian would fall to Portugal; everything west, to Castile. The treaty also superseded the earlier Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), which had divided the Atlantic along parallels. The negotiation was conducted in the Castilian town of Tordesillas, beside the river Douro, which gave the document its name.

The adjustment of the 370 leagues, secured through King João II’s diplomatic persistence, had a consequence no one foresaw in 1494: by extending the Portuguese band westward, it paved the way for much of the future Brazil — reached by Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 — to fall within the Portuguese sphere.

The originals and their safekeeping

The treaty was drawn up in two copies, later ratified: by Castile on 2 July and by King João II on 5 September 1494. The original documents are preserved today, divided between the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo, in Lisbon, and the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville — an eloquent sign of the shared nature of this heritage. The custody of the Torre do Tombo, the age-old repository of the Portuguese Crown’s archives, underscores the documentary continuity that for centuries sustained the memory of maritime expansion.

Documentary memory of the Age of Discovery

The inscription on the Memory of the World Register places the treaty within a body of Portuguese testimonies from the Age of Discovery that UNESCO has recognised as documentary heritage of humanity. Among them are the Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, the first description of the Brazilian coast, and the Journal of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India, which documents the opening of the sea route to the East. Alongside these, the Corpo Cronológico, a vast collection of the Torre do Tombo, brings together the correspondence and administrative papers that frame this period.

More than a border agreement, Tordesillas is the founding document of a geopolitical order that would shape the world for centuries. It is today part of the world of World Heritage and Memory of the World recognised by UNESCO in Portugal, where it stands in dialogue with the great monuments and archives of the age of expansion.