When the Pope Played Risk With the Real World: How Two Countries and a Clergy Divvied Up Millions of Lives Over a Map

On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued one of history's most audaciously presumptuous documents: the papal bull *Inter caetera*, which literally drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and declared that Spain could have everything to the west of it, while Portugal got everything to the east.This was the Pope's solution to the squabbling between two Catholic superpowers over who got to claim lands inhabited by millions of people who had absolutely no say in the matter. The line ran from pole to pole, roughly 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, and with papal authority, Alexander VI essentially divided the entire undiscovered world like a parent splitting a candy bar between two fighting children—except the candy bar contained entire civilizations.The Portuguese, unsurprisingly, found this division rather stingy, since Spain seemed to be getting the better end of the deal with this new place Columbus had just bumped into. So they negotiated directly with Spain, and the following year both kingdoms signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which moved the line further west. This revision proved rather fortunate for Portugal, as it meant Brazil—which wouldn't be "discovered" by Europeans for another seven years—fell into their sphere, explaining why Brazilians speak Portuguese today while the rest of South America speaks Spanish.The sheer chutzpah of two European nations and a Pope carving up the globe remains breathtaking, particularly since most of these territories were already occupied by people with their own ideas about sovereignty. But that's Renaissance geopolitics for you: act first, rationalize later, and ideally get papal blessing for your imperialism.This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AIThis episode includes AI-generated content.