ferred to the eastern hemisphere by dropping from the Manilan calendar the 31st of December.[1] Before that change people in the Philippines had lived on Spanish time, fifteen hours slow, and the day was dropped or added in the voyage between Hongkong and Manila instead of at the meridian of 180°. Leaving now the antipodes we may return to the controversies on this side of the globe.
After the Badajos Junta the Spaniards drew the line about as it is marked on the maps of 1527 and 1529, or roughly speaking from near Para to a point about one hundred miles east of Montevideo, while the Portuguese drew it from the same point so that it ran parallel for a part of its course with the river Parana. Thus the region now occupied by the most of Uruguay and the Argentine States of Entre Rios and Corrientes was disputed territory.
Both estimates gave Portugal far more than she was entitled to according to a modern scientific determination which makes it fall about one hundred and fifty miles west of Rio de Janeiro.[2]
But as Spain's main interest was in Peru there was no immediate collision, and the union of the two countries from 1580 to 1640 still further postponed the conflict.
In 1680, Lobo, the Portuguese governor of Rio de Janeiro, founded the settlement of Sacramento on the north bank of the River Plate in the disputed territory; the governor of La
- ↑ Guillemard, Magellan, 227. Those who find it difficult to reconcile our acquisition of the Philippines with the preservation of the Monroe Doctrine cannot fail to be reassured by the reflection that when the doctrine was promulgated the islands were a part of Spanish America.
- ↑ As calculated by D'Avezac, Bulletin de la Société de la Géog., Août et Septembre, 1857, map at the end. In the number of Mars et Avril, 1858, Varnhagen contests this calculation.
Where the line really should have been drawn is mainly a question of curiosity, as it ceased to have political importance before its location was so determined. The discussions of D'Avezac and Varnhagen I have summarized in an appendix to this essay as published in the Report of the American Historical Association for 1891, 128–129. Elaborate calculations of the problem are made by Harrisse in his Diplomatic History, by Dawson, and by August Baum in his inaugural dissertation, Die Demarkationslinie Papst Alexander VI. und ihre Folgungen, Cologne, 1890.
