planted the Christian faith, where they are neither obeyed nor loved, than we should have to prevent them from going to Scotland, Denmark, or Norway because we had been there before them."[1] If this doctrine could have prevailed it would have changed the history of the New World. That it did not prevail was owing in a large part to the papal Bulls.
The Portuguese rights in the Indian Seas, then represented by Spain, were contested by Grotius in 1609, in a tract entitled "Mare Liberum seu de Jure quod Batavis Competit ad Indica Commercia," which maintained the doctrine of the freedom of the seas asserted by these French writers.[2]
This sketch may be concluded with a brief glance at some of the more important results of Pope Alexander's attempt to divide the undiscovered heathen parts of the world between Spain and Portugal.
The most striking result was entirely unexpected and contrary to the design of the Bull. Designed, in the interest of Spain, to exclude Portugal from discovery and colonization in the west, it secured Portugal a title to Brazil which her only formidable rival could not impeach. Another result, also undesigned, but of great importance, was the promotion of geographical knowledge. The establishment of the Demarcation Line led to Magellan's voyage, and the efforts to determine it gave a powerful impulse to the progress of geodesy.[3]
- ↑ Pigeonneau, Hist., II, 153, from Ramusio, IV, 426. The author is supposed to have been Pierre Crignon.
- ↑ As the reputation of Grotius grew, and his great work, De Jure Belli et Pacis (1625), established him as an authority, the "learned" Selden undertook to confute his doctrine in his Mare Clausum, which was designed to uphold England's sovereignty of the narrow seas. But time and progress were with Grotius, and the range of territorial waters has since narrowed with the growth of commerce and the march of civilization.
- ↑ Humboldt, Cosmos (Harper's ed.), II, 277, says: "The papal lines of demarcation . . . exercised great influence on the endeavors to improve nautical astronomy, and especially on the methods attempted for the determination of the longitude." For various efforts of scientific men to get the longitude of places to determine the line in South America, see Juan y Ulloa, Dissertacion, 68–94; Calvo, Recueil, I, 217–229; L'Art de Vérifier les Dates, 3d ser., XIII, 8.
