Hoje acordei com vontade de falar de Tordesilhas.
«(…) The Pope in 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 had drawn a line dividing Spanish from Portuguese interests in the region of the Atlantic and Brazil. But no one knew for certain that the world was round — the uncertainty in the East was resolved in 1529 by a treaty at Saragossa. By that agreement the Spaniards gave up all interest in the legendary Spice Islands, the Moluccas, and abandoned all contact beyond latitude 17 degrees to the west. In exchange, the always penurious King of Spain received from rich Portugal the princely sum of 350,000 ducats. The treaty of Saragossa might have ended Spanish interest in the East Indies and the mysterious islands of San Lázaro, but speculation about the archipelago continued; thus the apparently immortal Pedro de Alvarado, (…) organised a fleet whose aim would be to visit and perhaps colonise those islands.(…) About now there began the Spanish romance with the idea of carrying on the conquest of the Philippines into China. First Legazpi himself can be found to be writing to King Philip to propose the building of six galleys to “run down the coast of China and reach agreements with rulers on the mainland”.(…) Thus it was that the “China project” (la empresa de China) established itself in the minds of the Viceroy, the Council of the Indies in Castile and the governor of the Philippines in Manila. In those days the ambitions of the Spanish conquistadors seemed limitless as can be seen from a letter sent home to Castile in January 1574 by Hernando Riquel, the chief notary of Manila. That official actually thought China could be conquered by fewer than 60 good Spaniards[LOL]. (…) The resolutions of this remarkable meeting concluded with an indication of the large number of new encomiendas which would be set up in China, not to speak of a new generation of judges, dukes, marquises and viceroys who would have to be named. New universities, monasteries and military forts would be founded. (…) The Portuguese, newly annexed to the Spaniards after the death of their last independent monarch, thought that war would damage their commerce and Portuguese Jesuits, with their much longer experience of the East, tried to distance themselves from their Spanish colleagues. (…) From the beginning, mestizaje with the Chinese would be encouraged for Chinese women were known to be “serious, honest, retiring and faithful and honourable subjects of their husband and usually of great grace, beauty and discretion”. (…)In the course of their deliberations Alonso Sánchez, who had a sense of proportion, saw that the news of the defeat of the Invincible Armada in August 1588 necessitated a delay before the king could turn his mind to another great maritime expedition.(…)»
Foi mais forte que eu! :) Cumpleaños feliz, besos guapa.
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