Coming-of-age Connectivity?

As China's BRI is redrawing global economic outline through an extensive network of strategic trade corridors, India—a non-signatory—must weigh its options carefully

- DIPANKAR DEY

June 7, 2025, marked the completion of 531 years of the Treaty of Tordesillas, enacted on that day in 1494 by the governments of Spain and Portugal. The Treaty, named after the city in Spain where it was made, neatly divided the "New World" of the Americas between the two superpowers.

Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus led an expedition, backed by Spain's Catholic Monarchs, seeking to establish a new route to Asia. By mistake, he reached the Caribbean. His arrival there was the beginning of a period of European contact with the Americas, which would lead to conquest and settlement, and the deaths of many millions of indigenous people to diseases and war. New studies reveal that Columbus was born to a Jewish family in western Europe, but concealed his Jewish identity, or converted to Catholicism, to escape religious persecution.

In 1493, after reports of Columbus' discoveries had reached Spain, the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella enlisted papal support for their New World claims to prevent the Portuguese and other possible rival claimants. To accommodate them, the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI issued bulls setting up a line of demarcation from pole to pole 100 leagues (about 320 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands—about 500 km off the coast of West Africa. Spain was given exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line. Portuguese expeditions were to keep to the east of the line. Neither power was to occupy any territory already in the hands of a Christian ruler, the Treaty professed.