HISTORY32 - South America: Part 2 - European Colonization
This article is Part 2 of my 3-part history of South America. Part 1 covered the continent’s geologic evolution through pre-Columbian civilizations. Part 2 covers European colonization. Part 3 will cover the independence period through today. In 1494, within two years of Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, Spain and Portugal, the two great maritime powers of that time, on the expectation of new lands being discovered in the West, signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which they agreed that newly discovered lands outside Europe should belong to the two countries. The Treaty established an imaginary line along a north-south meridian, roughly 46° 37' West. In terms of the treaty, all new lands to the west of the line (which is now known to take in most of South America), would belong to Spain, and all new lands to the east, to Portugal. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal, Spain was allotted all new lands west o...