Editorial November 5, 1979 ISSUE

Drawing your line of demarcation

NATHAN A. TALBOT

The New World had been discovered. Differences were cropping up between Spanish and Portuguese explorers over who got what. Finally Pope Alexander VI tried to end the dispute by drawing an imaginary north-south line—a line of demarcation. Spain was to get unclaimed land to the west; Portugal, land to the east.

But the line didn't work out. Further disputes and more treaties kept shifting it. To make matters worse, France, England, and the Netherlands paid little attention to it.

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