Enlightenment · South America · Politics

1750

Treaty of Madrid Redraws South America

January 13, 1750

Spain and Portugal, tired of endlessly arguing over the Tordesillas line, traded colonies on paper - Portugal kept the Amazon interior, Spain gained the Sacramento colony. Jesuit missions of the Guarani, suddenly handed to Lisbon, would rise in rebellion and be crushed within the decade. The treaty tacitly acknowledged that the old papal division of the world no longer matched the facts on the ground.