The Doctrine of Discovery originated in papal bulls permitting seizure of non-Christian lands

Evidence

It originated in a papal bull issued in 1455 that permitted the Portuguese monarchy to seize West Africa. Following Columbus’s infamous exploratory voyage in 1492, sponsored by the king and queen of the infant Spanish state, another papal bull extended similar permission to Spain. Disputes between the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies led to the papal-initiated Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which, besides dividing the globe equally between the two Iberian empires, clarified that only non-Christian lands fell under the discovery doctrine. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 500

Categorization

• DEFINE: Traces the doctrine’s origin to specific papal bulls and the Treaty of Tordesillas.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 500
• XREF: connects to: The Doctrine of Discovery was legally extended to the Americas after Africa — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 4896