ABSTRACT
Portugal and Spain divided the world into two parts with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, aimed at warding off violent competition between Western Europe’s great maritime powers. Both had sponsored voyages to distant seas in the Americas and Asia. The Portuguese claimed sovereignty from the Brazilian prominence in the western Atlantic around the Cape of Good Hope through the Indian Ocean and South China Sea as far as the Philippines. Maintaining this monopoly became increasingly difficult following the fission of the Catholic Church in Europe, with the revolt of the Protestant Netherlands against the Hapsburgs and their subsequent independence in 1585, and England’s confirmed shift to Protestantism with Elizabeth I. Ultimately, key Portuguese maps of Asian sea routes and accounts of voyages to India were translated into Dutch in the 1590s and then published in English. A complex motivation combining politics, religion and personal ambition inspired Dutch and English ventures into these sea routes.
