ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the construction of the Portuguese and Spanish empires, approaching it as an entwined historical process across three continents, Africa, America, and Asia. By 1500, the main directions of the Iberian explorations had emerged. The Atlantic experiments had demonstrated that the construction of transoceanic powers was largely a matter of communication and collaboration with locals. The term “Iberian explorations” refers to the multiple forms of power configuration and legitimation in which the Portuguese and Spaniards were obliged to engage in order to consolidate their overseas power. The warlike tone adopted by these papal decisions was geared to legitimise Portuguese control over the incipient slave trade in the eyes of Castilians and other European powers with growing Atlantic interests. Law and theology supported the construction of the Iberian empires, and both Portuguese and Spaniards used iconography to celebrate their global powers and read them in light of millenarian expectations.
