Treaty of Zaragoza

The 1529 agreement between Spain and Portugal that settled their competing claims to the Moluccas by extending the boundary established by the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Treaty of Tordesillas: A 1494 agreement dividing newly encountered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian in the Atlantic. Zaragoza extended Tordesillas’s division of overseas claims to the opposite side of the globe.
Ferdinand Magellan: A Portuguese-born navigator who led Spain’s 1519 expedition to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. His expedition reached the Moluccas and sharpened the question of which crown could claim them.
Portuguese Empire: The overseas empire built by Portugal through maritime trade, forts, settlements, and colonial rule. The treaty strengthened Portugal’s recognized position in the Moluccas and its Asian trade network.
Ptolemaic geography: The geographical system derived from Claudius Ptolemy’s ancient writings, including a coordinate-based map of the known world. Its inherited estimates of longitude contributed to the uncertainty surrounding claims east of the Tordesillas line.
Moluccas: An Indonesian island group historically prized by European traders for its cloves and other spices. The islands’ spice wealth made them the central prize in the treaty’s dispute.
Magellan expedition: The Spanish voyage begun in 1519 that completed the first circumnavigation of Earth. Its arrival in the Moluccas gave Spain a practical basis for contesting Portugal’s position.
Spanish Empire: The empire established by Spain across the Americas, Europe, and parts of Asia and Oceania. The settlement limited Spain’s immediate claim to the Moluccas while leaving its Pacific ambitions intact.
Longitude: A geographic coordinate measuring position east or west of a reference meridian. Determining longitude at sea was difficult, making the treaty’s global boundary hard to locate precisely.
Antimeridian: The meridian opposite a given meridian, forming a complete circle of longitude with it. The Zaragoza boundary addressed the eastern counterpart to Tordesillas’s Atlantic division.
Juan Sebastián Elcano: A Basque navigator who completed the first circumnavigation after Magellan’s death during the expedition. Elcano’s return to Spain supplied evidence that the westward route had reached the Spice Islands.

Linked from 8 pages