Below is the actual Treaty

... WHEREAS a certain controversy exists between the said lords, their constituents, as to what lands, of all those discovered in the ocean sea up to the present day, the date of this treaty, pertain to each one of the said parts respectively; therefore, for the sake of peace and concord, and for the preservation of the relationship and love of the said King of Portugal for the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., it being the pleasure of their Highnesses, they ... covenanted and agreed that a boundary or straight line be determined and drawn north and south, from pole to pole, on the said ocean sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic pole. This boundary or line shall be drawn straight, as aforesaid, at a distance of three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, being calculated by degrees....And all lands, both islands and mainlands, found and discovered already, or to be found and discovered hereafter, by the said King of Portugal and by his vessels on this side of the said line and bound determined as above, toward the east, in either north or south latitude, on the eastern side of the said bound, provided the said bound is not crossed, shall belong to and remain in the possession of, and pertain forever to, the said King of Portugal and his successors. And all other lands, both islands and mainlands, found or to be found hereafter...by the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., and by their vessels, on the western side of the said bound, determined as above, after having passed the said bound toward the west, in either its north or south latitude, shall belong to...the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, etc., and to their successors.

     Item, the said representatives promise and affirm...that from this date no ships shall be despatched - namely as follows: the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, etc., for this part of the bound...which pertains to the said King of Portugal...nor the said King of Portugal to the other side of the said bound which pertains to the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc. - for the purpose of discovering and seeking any mainlands or islands, or for the purpose of trade, barter, or conquest of any kind. But should it come to pass that the said ships of the said King and Queen of Castile...on sailing thus on this side of the said bound, should discover any mainlands or islands in the region pertaining, as above-said, to the said King of Portugal, such mainlands or islands shall belong forever to the said King of Portugal and his heirs, and their Highnesses shall order them to be surrendered to him immediately. And if the said ships of the said King of Portugal discover any islands or mainlands in the regions of the said King and Queen of Castile...all such lands shall belong to and remain forever in the possession of the said King and Queen of Castile..all such lands shall belong to and remain forever in the possession of the said King and Queen of Castile...and their heirs, and the said King of Portugal shall cause such lands to be surrendered immediately....

     And by this present agreement, they...entreat our most Holy Father that his Holiness be pleased to confirm and approve this said agreement, according to what is set forth therein; and that he order his bulls in regard to it to be issued to the parties or to whichever of the parties may solicit them, with the tenor of this agreement incorporated therein, and that he lay his censures upon those who shall violate or oppose it at any time whatsoever....

Here is an explanation of the Treaty

    The Treaty of Tordesillas was agreed upon by the Spanish and the Portuguese to clear up confusion on newly claimed land in the New World. The early 1400's brought about great advances in European exploration. In order make trade more efficient, Portugal attempted to find a direct water route to the India and China. By using a direct water route, Arab merchants, who owned land trade routes, were not able to make a profit off of the European trade merchants. After Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, it was clear that conflict would soon arise over land claims by Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese also wanted to protect their monopoly on the trade route to Africa and felt it too threatened. It was only after the realization that Columbus had found something big that land became the important issue. The newly discovered land held great potential wealth which would benefit European nations.

     On May 4, 1493 Pope Alexander VI took action to clear up any confusion that may have arisen over territorial claims. He issued a decree which established an imaginary line running north and south through the mid-Atlantic, 100 leagues (480 km) from the Cape Verde islands. Spain would have possession of any unclaimed territories to the west of the line and Portugal would have possession of any unclaimed territory to the east of the line.

     After further exploration, the Portuguese grew dissatisfied with the agreement when they realized how much more land Spain had been given. In June of 1494 the line was re-negotiated and the agreement was officially ratified during a meeting in the Spanish town of Tordesillas. The Treaty of Tordesillas re-established the line 370 leagues (1,770 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands.  It was evident that little exploration had taken place at the time the treaty was signed because Spain was granted a much larger portion of land. Portugal was only given possession of Brazil. Portugal pushed over the next several hundred years to moved the border of Brazil westward. Because the line was not very well defined, the Spanish did not put up any opposition to this Portuguese expansion.  Just months after Christopher Columbus returned to Europe from his maiden voyage to the New World, the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI gave Spain a head-start in the quest for domination over newly discovered regions of the world.  The Pope decreed that all lands discovered west of a meridian 100 leagues (one league is 3 miles or 4.8 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Spain while new lands discovered east of that line would belong to Portugal. This papal bull also specified that all lands already under the control of a "Christian prince" would remain under that same control.

     This limiting line made Portugal angry. King John II (the nephew of Prince Henry the Navigator) negotiated with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to move the line to the west. King John's rationale to Ferdinand and Isabella was that the Pope's line extends all around the globe, thus limiting Spanish influence in Asia.  On June 7, 1494 Spain and Portugal met at Tordesillas, Spain and signed a treaty moved the line 270 leagues west, to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. This new line (located at approximately 46° 37') gave Portugal more claim to South America yet also provided Portugal with automatic control over most of the Indian Ocean.  While it would be several hundred years before the line of the Treaty of Tordesillas could be accurately determined (due to problems determining longitude), Portugal and Spain kept to their sides of the line quite well. Portugal ended up colonizing places like Brazil in South America and India and Macau in Asia. Brazil's Portuguese-speaking population is a result of the Treaty of Tordesillas.  Portugal and Spain originally ignored an order from the pope, but Pope Julius II agreed to the change in 1506.

Here is the Worksheet:

The Treaty of Tordesillas

1.  Why was the Treaty of Tordesillas drawn up? 

2.  Which Pope originally wrote up the Treaty?

3.  Where was that Pope from?  (Where was he born?)

4a.  What month/year was the Treaty signed?

4b. What month/year was it revised?

5.  Why did Portugal (and Spain) originally sail West? 

6.  What islands marked the starting reference point of the line? 

7a.  Where was the line originally located?

7b. Where was the new line?

8a.  Name the Portuguese King. 

8b. The Spanish King and Queen.

9.  What argument did the Portuguese king make to the Spanish king and queen in an effort to persuade them to move the line west?

10.  What is the name of the South American country that was colonized by the Portuguese?

11.  According to the Treaty, the line stretched from pole to pole.  Name the two poles.

12.  Did the line apply to islands as well (Quote the line from the reading)?

13.  What prevented each country from setting up an expedition into areas “promised” to the other country? 

The Mission, Directed by Roland Joffe

Robert De Niro (Capt. Rodrigo Mendoza),   Jeremy Irons (Father Gabriel, Jesuit)  Ray McAnally (Altamirano), Aidan Quinn (Felipe), Liam Neeson (Fielding)

SUMMARY 1 -        Jeremy Irons plays a Spanish Jesuit who goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region. Robert DeNiro plays a slave hunter who is converted and joins Irons in his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portugese aggressors.

SUMMARY 2-         Father Gabriel ascends the mountains of Brazil to bring Christianity to the natives. He is successful and brings about a golden age among them. Mendoza, a slaver, kills his brother in a fit of rage, and only Fr. Gabriel's guidance prevents his suicide. Gabriel brings Mendoza to work at his mission with the natives, and Mendoza finds peace and asks to become a priest. The church , under pressure, cedes the land to the Portuguese which will allow slavers in again. Mendoza breaks his vows and organizes the natives to resist while Gabriel warns him to help them as a priest.

REVIEW:  The Mission By Roger Ebert

  "The Mission" feels exactly like one of those movies where you'd rather see the documentary about how the movie was made. You'd like to know why so many talented people went to such incredible lengths to make a difficult and beautiful movie - without any of them, on the basis of the available evidence, having the slightest notion of what the movie was about. There isn't a moment in "The Mission" that is not watchable, but the moments don't add up to a coherent narrative. At the end, we can sort of piece things together, but the movie has never really made us care.

  The action takes place in South America in the 18th century. Two great colonial forces are competing for the hearts and minds of the native Indians. On the one hand, there are the imperialist plunderers, who want to establish a trade in riches and slaves. On the other hand, there are the missionaries, who want to convert the Indians to Christ.

  The central figure in the movie is Mendoza (Robert De Niro), who begins as the first kind of imperialist and ends as the second. Early in the film, he is a slave trader, a man of the flesh. But after he kills his brother in a flash of anger, he yearns for redemption, and he gets it from the missionaries who assign him an agonizing penance: He must climb a cliff near a steep waterfall, dragging behind him a net filled with a heavy weight of armor. Again and again, De Niro strives to scale the dangerous height, until finally all of the anger and sin is drained from him and he becomes a missionary at a settlement run by Gabriel (Jeremy Irons).

  The movie now develops its story through the device of letters that explain what happened to the mission settlement. The missionaries dream of a society in which Christian natives will live in harmony with the Spanish and Portuguese. But the colonial governors find this vision dangerous; they would rather enslave the Indians than convert them, and they issue orders for the mission to be destroyed. Irons and De Niro disagree on how to meet this threat: Irons believes in prayer and passive resistance, and De Niro believes in armed rebellion.

  In the end, neither approach is effective, and the movie concludes in a confusing series of scenes in which badly choreographed battle sequences are intercut with Irons' final religious services. It is a measure of the film's disorganization that at the end, when it is crucial that we understand who the Indians are fighting and how the battle is going, mere chaos takes over the screen and the actors stagger out of clouds of smoke as if they're looking for directions.

  "The Mission" was produced by David Puttnam and directed by Roland Joffe, the same team that made the great film "The Killing Fields." That film was fired by a pure, burning anger against a great injustice, and it had a dramatic center in the life and saga of Dith Pran, the Cambodian who survived the occupation of his land and eventually lived to find freedom. Pran's story was a magnet that pulled us through the film. "The Mission" has no similar pull. Indeed, it hardly seems to have a center and feels like a massive, expensive film production that, once set in motion, kept going under its own momentum even though nobody involved had a clear idea of its final direction.

  I suggested that no single shot in the movie is without interest. That is probably true. The locations are spectacular - especially a waterfall that supplies the great opening image of a crucified missionary floating to his doom. The actors are effective in their individual scenes. The mysterious atmosphere of the forest seeps into the story and lends it a certain mysticism. All that was needed to pull these elements together was a structure that would clearly define who the characters were, what they stood for and why we should care about them. Unfortunately, that is all that is missing.

Classwork:  List the major groups (with at least one character) of the film.

1.  Jesuit Priests - Father Gabriel, Mendoza, Fielding

2.  Slavers - Captain Mendoza, Don Cabeza

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Homework:  Write a basic review of the movie.  You read Roger Ebert’s before the film was shown.  What do YOU think of the film?  Was Ebert credible?  What would you like to point out to him that could/would have helped him understand the movie a little better?  Would you use this film in your World History class?  As always, explain your answers.  Be Brief, yet informative.  Due Friday.  (Basically 300-500 words)  This is NOT an essay so it can be handwritten.

ESSAY DUE March 22, 2005  (Must be TYPED!  Min = 300 words, max is 5 pages)

Which of the following has had the biggest impact on how the world has played out up to today? 

     Luther’s Revolt (Protestantism, Reformation, etc.)

     Printing Press (moveable type in Europe)

     Heliocentric Theory

     Scientific Method

Students should consider the following topics when analyzing the impacts:  Power, Equality, Money/Economics, Freedom, Education, Ignorance, Knowledge, Tolerance, Protest/Change, and Sharing.

Good students will read “ahead” and try to find events in history that can be interpreted as ripple effects of the original impacts. We will also debate the topic sometime this week.