The Treaty of Tordesillas divides the ocean
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Castile and Portugal agreed at Tordesillas to divide rights of navigation and possession outside Europe along a meridian drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, everything west of the line falling to Castile and everything east to Portugal. The line moved a papal division of the previous year substantially westward at Portuguese insistence — a change that, six years later, put the Brazilian coast on the Portuguese side. The treaty is remarkable less for its arrogance than for its impossibility: no one could measure longitude at sea, the league itself had no single agreed value, and the parties did not specify from which of the Cape Verde Islands to count. The most consequential border of the sixteenth century could not be located by anyone who signed it.
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- Celestial navigation (latitude sailing)constrained_by
- The Atlantic crossing (Carrera de Indias)concerns
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