26 APRIL

Moluccas ( Indonesia) and Felipinas/St. Lazaro (Philippines)

1525 -  Spanish King Charles I issues the "Royal decree of the Fray Garcia de Loaysa, appointed governor of the Moluccas, to allow Captain Sebastian Caboto and the people of his armada to trade in the Island"; following Spain's "discovery" [read: first learned about]of the nearby and future colony the Philippine archipelago (Islas de San Lazaro) with the arrival of the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521,  the Spanish colonizers have begun to try to gain control of Moluccas, the so-called “Spice Islands” (future Indonesia] in the bid to thwart its naval nemesis, Portugal, which had forged alliance with the sultan of Ternate; the two colonial powers earlier sought to prevent disagreements with their colonial expansionist undertaking through the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, with Pope Alexander VI drawing an imaginary north-sough demarcation line, 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, in which all lands west of the line should belong to Spain and anything east, to Portugal; about four years later, in 1529, the king of Spain will forge a peace deal with Portugal, nominally abandoning interest over Moluccas for a sum of money although Spanish interest over the islands will persist for some century and a half, sending expeditions from Manila until the colonial Spanish governor of the Philippines, Manrique de Lara, decides to dismantle all garrisons in the Spice Islands by 1663.


Photo credit: http://www.tooleys.co.uk/tas3.htm