The Philippine Islands in situation and inhabitants belong to the Asiatic world, but, for the first three centuries of their recorded history, they were in a sense a dependency of America, and now the whirligig of time has restored them in their political relations to the Western Hemisphere.  As a dependency of New Spain they constituted the extreme western verge of the Spanish dominions and were commonly known as the Western Islands [2] (Las Islas del Poniente). Their discovery and conquest rounded out an empire which in geographical extent far surpassed anything the world had then seen.  When the sun rose in Madrid, it was still early afternoon of the preceding day in Manila, and Philip II was the first monarch who could boast that the sun never set upon his dominions. [3]

In one generation, 1486-1522, the two little powers of the Iberian Peninsula had extended their sway over the seas until they embraced the globe.  The way had been prepared for this unparalleled achievement by the courage and devotion of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who gave his life to the advancement of geographical discovery and of Portuguese commerce.  The exploration of the west coast of Africa was the school of the navigators who sailed to the East and the West Indies, and out of the administration of the trade with Africa grew the colonial systems of later days.

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century the increasing obstructions in Egypt and by the Turks to the trade with the East Indies held out a great prize to the discoverer of an all-sea route to the Spice Islands.  Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama solved this problem for Portugal, but the solution offered to Spain by Columbus and accepted in 1492 revealed a New World, the Indies of the West.

The King of Portugal, zealous to retain his monopoly of African and eastern exploration, and the pious sovereigns of Spain, desirous to build their colonial empire on solid and unquestioned foundations, alike appealed to the Pope for a definition of their rights and a confirmation of their claims.  The world seemed big enough and with a spacious liberality Pope Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella the right to explore and to take possession of all the hitherto unknown and heathen parts of the world west of a certain line drawn north and south in the Atlantic Ocean.  East of that line the rights of Portugal, resting on their explorations and the grants of earlier popes, were confirmed.

The documentary history of the Philippines begins with the Demarcation Bulls and the treaty of Tordesillas, for out of them grew Magellan’s voyage and the discovery of the islands; and without them the Philippines would no doubt have been occupied by Portugal and later have fallen a prey to the Dutch as did the Moluccas.

King John of Portugal was dissatisfied with the provisions of the Demarcation Bulls.  He held that the treaty between Spain and Portugal in 1479 had resigned to Portugal the field of oceanic discovery, Spain retaining only the Canaries; and he felt that a boundary line only a hundred leagues west of the Azores not only was an infringement on his rights but would be a practical embarrassment in that it would not allow his sailors adequate sea room for their African voyages.