Hemispheric Division: Portuguese and Spanish Territorial Claims - 1493
Columbus vs. Magellan
A fascinating manuscript document, recorded in the India Office in 1889, containing important details and background on the historic hemispheric division of the world between the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns. This concise account elucidates the controversial division of the globe between Spanish and Portuguese Crowns, from the North Pole to the South, granted by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 in his Papal Bull Inter caetera. The writer presents a lucid summary of the significant events, political strife, including the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ferndinand Magallan, leading to the pivotal decree, the "Moluccas Issue" and eventually the conclusive Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529. A chart commonly referred to as the Second Borgia Map, after Alexander VI (born Rodigo Borgia), was drawn up by the Royal Cosmographer to King Charles V of Spain, immediately after Columbus' return from the New World.
The text is by Charles Frederic Danvers (1833-1906), who has signed and dated the manuscript on the final page: 24 May 1889. The India Office also published Danvers's text in 1889 - the printed version being very rare today (only half a dozen examples are noted in OCLC). Danvers worked at the Indian Office from 1858 and was the Registrar and Superintendent of Records of the India Office from 1884 to 1898. He edited the historical work, Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East, 1602-1615 (1896-1902).
An excerpt from the manuscript here follows:
On the 8th January 1454, Pope Picholas the 5th granted to Alphonso the 5th, King of Portugal, an exclusive right to all the countries that might be discovered by his subjects between Cape Nun, on the west coast of Africa, and the Continent of India. After the first voyage of Christopher Columbus (1492) and the discovery of Hispaniola (Haiti) Ferdinant, King of Aragon, and Isabella, Queen of Castile, wished to obtain from the Pope a recognition of their rights to all countries discovered by their squadrons. Pope Alexander the 6th (Rodrigo Borgia)... Accordingly, the 4th March 1493, Pope Alexander issued a Bull granting to Ferdinand and Isabella, by virtue of his apostolic and pontifical power, the same rights and privileges in respect to the countries discovered towards the west, as the Portuguese possessed over their African discoveries...and, further, with the view of preventing any future dispute between the two Powers as to their respective possessions, a second Bull was promulgated on the following day by which was indicated a line of demarcation between the two. This line was a meridian drawn from the North to the South Pole running 100 leagues from the West of the Azores and the Cape de Verde Islands, so that all the islands and lands discovered, or to be discovered, to the West of that line, which had not already been occupied by a Christian power before Christmas day 1493 were to belong to aforesaid King and Queen and to their successors, as those to the East of the same line were to belong to the Crown of Portugal.
An curious and unusual manuscript item relating to the Borgian Map.