Initially, the line of demarcation did not encircle the earth. Instead, Spain and Portugal could conquer any new lands they were the first to discover, Spain to the west and Portugal to the east, even if they passed each other on the other side of the globe. But Portugal's discovery of the highly valued
Moluccas in 1512 caused Spain to argue in 1518 that the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the earth into two equal hemispheres. After the surviving ships of
Magellan's fleet visited the Moluccas in 1521, Spain claimed that those islands were within its western hemisphere. The Treaty of Vitoria, negotiated between Spain and Portugal on 19 February 1524, called for the Junta of Badajoz to meet in an attempt to reach an agreement on the anti-meridian, which ultimately failed. It was finally agreed in the
Treaty of Zaragoza (or Saragossa), signed on 22 April 1529, that Spain would relinquish its claims to the Moluccas upon the payment of 350,000
ducats of gold by Portugal to Spain. To prevent Spain from encroaching upon Portugal's Moluccas, the anti-meridian was to be leagues or 17° to the east of the Moluccas, passing through the islands of Las Velas and Santo Thome. This distance is slightly smaller than the 300 leagues determined by Magellan as the westward distance from los Ladrones to the Philippine island of
Samar, which is just west of due north of the Moluccas. The Moluccas are a group of islands west of New Guinea. However, unlike the large modern
Indonesian
archipelago of the
Maluku Islands, to 16th-century Europeans the Moluccas were a small chain of islands, the only place on earth where
cloves grew, just west of the large north Malukan island of
Halmahera (called Gilolo at the time). Cloves were so prized by Europeans for the medicinal uses that they were worth their weight in gold. 16th- and 17th-century maps and descriptions indicate that the main islands were
Ternate,
Tidore,
Moti,
Makian and
Bacan, although the last was often ignored even though it was by far the largest island. The principal island was Ternate at the chain's northern end (0°47N, only in diameter) on whose southwest coast the Portuguese built a stone fort (
Forte de São João Baptista de Ternate) during 1522–23, which could only be repaired, not modified, according to the Treaty of Zaragoza. This north–south chain occupies two degrees of latitude bisected by the equator at about 127°24E, with Ternate, Tidore, Moti, and Makian north of the equator and Bacan south of it. Although the treaty's Santo Thome island has not been identified, its "Islas de las Velas" (Islands of the Sails) appear in a 1585 Spanish history of China, on the 1594 world map of
Petrus Plancius, on an anonymous map of the Moluccas in the 1598 London edition of
Linschoten, and on the 1607 world map of Petro Kærio, identified as a north–south chain of islands in the northwest Pacific, which were also called the "Islas de los Ladrones" (Islands of the Thieves) during that period. Their name was changed by Spain in 1667 to "Islas de las Marianas" (
Mariana Islands), which include
Guam at their southern end. Guam's longitude of 144°45E is east of the Moluccas' longitude of 127°24E by 17°21, which is remarkably close by 16th-century standards to the treaty's 17° east. This longitude passes through the eastern end of the main north Japanese island of
Hokkaido and through the eastern end of New Guinea, which is where Frédéric Durand placed the demarcation line. Moriarty and Keistman placed the demarcation line at 147°E by measuring 16.4° east from the western end of New Guinea (or 17° east of 130°E). Despite the treaty's clear statement that the demarcation line passes 17° east of the Moluccas, some sources place the line just east of the Moluccas. The Treaty of Zaragoza did not modify or clarify the line of demarcation provided by the Treaty of Tordesillas, nor did it validate Spain's claim to equal hemispheres (180° each), so the two lines divided the earth into unequal hemispheres. Portugal's portion was roughly 191° whereas Spain's portion was roughly 169°. Both portions have a large uncertainty of ±4° because of the wide variation in the opinions regarding the location of the Tordesillas line. Portugal gained control of all lands and seas west of the Zaragoza line, including all of Asia and its neighboring islands so far discovered, leaving Spain most of the Pacific Ocean. Although the Philippines were not named in the treaty, Spain implicitly relinquished any claim to them because they were well west of the line. Nevertheless, by 1542, Charles V decided to colonize the Philippines, judging that Portugal would not protest because the archipelago had no spices. Although a number of expeditions sent from
New Spain arrived in the Philippines, they were unable to establish a settlement because the return route across the Pacific was unknown. King
Philip II succeeded in 1565 when he sent
Miguel López de Legazpi and
Andrés de Urdaneta, establishing the initial Spanish trading post at
Cebu and later founding Manila in 1571. Besides
Brazil and the Moluccas, Portugal eventually controlled
Angola,
Mozambique,
Portuguese Guinea, and
São Tomé and Príncipe (among other territories and bases) in
Africa; several bases or territories such as
Muscat,
Ormus and
Bahrain in the Persian Gulf,
Goa,
Bombay and
Daman and Diu (among other coastal cities) in
India;
Ceylon, and
Malacca, bases in present-day Indonesia as
Makassar,
Solor,
Ambon, and
Portuguese Timor, the
entrepôt-base of
Macau and the entrepôt-enclave of
Dejima (
Nagasaki) in the Far East. Spain, on the other hand, would control vast western regions in the Americas, in areas ranging from the present-day United States to present-day Argentina, an empire that would extend to the Philippines, and bases in Ternate and
Formosa (17th century). ==Effect on other European powers==