Portuguese colonization of the Americas Portuguese colonization of the Americas Portugal was the leading country in the European exploration of the world in the 15th century. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 divided the Earth outside Europe into Castilian and Portuguese global territorial hemispheres for exclusive conquest and colonization. Portugal colonized parts of South America (mostly Brazil), but also made some unsuccessful attempts to colonize North America in present-day Canada. Based on the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Portuguese Crown claimed it had territorial rights in the area visited by the Genoese explorer John Cabot in 1497 and 1498 on behalf of the
Women in the Americas society throughout Mexico's history. Incan society had the concept of duality in gender parallelism during the pre-Columbian period. This allowed Incan women in the Andes of South America to have assertive roles in society. The country of Peru saw European women from Spain who were early conquistadores and encomenderas between the years of 1534 and 1620. There were at least 102 of these women who were political agents, had access to large amounts of wealth, had been granted hundreds or thousands of Native people to work for them as slaves. Many countries in the Americas have provided legal frameworks for