An Alternate Colonial Era

[Simreeve]

2) The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 was the original agreement which divided the world between Spain and Portugal and set up the original spheres of colonization. If this changes, you could see very different colonization. For example, during this time period latitidue was MUCH easier to measure than longitude so maybe rather than dividing the world East/West it could be divided North/South so that Portugal gets all lands South of the equator while Spain gets all lands to the North. This would still give Portugal what they want (a route around Africa to Asia) and Spain what they want (colonies in the region discovered by Columbus), so I think it could be plausible??

That effectively restricts Spain (or, more accurately, Castille) to the nothern Atlantic though, unless they can find a workable 'North-West Passage', because without being able to sail aorund the southern ends of either Africa or South America they are blocked off from the Pacific.
And what they originally wanted, and financed Columbus in the hope of, was a westwards route to the Spice Islands...

 

[Niko Malaka]

That effectively restricts Spain (or, more accurately, Castille) to the nothern Atlantic though, unless they can find a workable 'North-West Passage', because without being able to sail aorund the southern ends of either Africa or South America they are blocked off from the Pacific.
And what they originally wanted, and financed Columbus in the hope of, was a westwards route to the Spice Islands...

Actually, the Treaty of Tordesillas had a direct precedent in the Treaty of Alcaçovas (1479). The Treaty of Alcaçovas had as priority to stablish the terms of the peace between Portugal and Castille-Aragon after the castilian succession war. So there are no much geographical precisions, apart of granting the castilian possession over the Canary Islands and the protuguese monopolistic rights over "The Guinea" and the "African Sea". It has been suggested that one of the reasons the Catholic Kings doubted about Columbu's expedition was the geographical uncertainity of the treaty, that created some juridical insecurities about the iownership of the lands to find beyond the ocean. However, after Columbus returned to europe from his first voyage (1493) the portuguese sent a proposal of partition to the Catholic Kings, which would be a paralellcrossing the Canary Islands, with the north 8including the Canaries) to Castille and the south to Portugal. Probasbly it's very late to have the castilians accepting this, since once they have the information and discoveries made by Columbus, and a vague idea of the streams and winds and many doubts about what had been actually found (the spice islands? anything else?) they are going to push for somethng like in OTL. But, what if the portuguese propose the same thing a bit earlier?.