Imperial division and Caribbean rivalry

The Portuguese-Spanish partition of overseas claims helps explain why Brazil became Portuguese while Spain claimed much of the rest of the Americas. The treaty overstated Iberian control: Portuguese and Spanish ships influenced powerful societies across Asia but did not conquer them. By the eighteenth century, the Protestant British Empire had become a commercial and naval rival that did not accept a papal division of the world. The comparison places the Caribbean within a wider contest over trade, territory, and sea power.