The true story involving a corrupt pope -- the patriarch of the family fictionalized in the hit Showtime series The Borgias -- in an explosive feud between monarchs and the Church that divided the world in half.

When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smouldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's Jo o II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI -- the notorious Rodrigo Borgia -- issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (and unknown) world between Spain and Portugal. The edict was to have a profound influence on world history: it propelled Spain and Portugal to superpower status, steered many other European nations on a collision course and became the central grievance in two centuries of international espionage, piracy and warfare.

The treaty also began the fight for "the freedom of the seas," a distinctly modern notion, championed in the early seventeenth century by the Dutch legal theorist Hugo Grotius, whose arguments became the foundation of international law.

At the heart of one of the greatest international diplomatic and political agreements of the last five centuries were the strained relationships and passions of a handful of powerful individuals. They were linked by a shared history of quarrels, rivalries and hatreds that dated back decades. Yet the struggle ultimately stemmed from Isabella's determination to defy tradition and the king and to choose Ferdinad as her husband.

"Historian Stephen R. Bown has unpacked this rich and colourful history in a splendid work, 1494: How a Family Feud in Medieval Spain Divided the World in Half, an entertaining and elegantly written voyage into the treacherous seas of religious fanatics, greedy slavers, depraved autocrats, doomed indigenous peoples and desperately brave adventurers in search of fortune." -- Globe and Mail

"Historian Bown offers an entertaining...chronicle of intrigue, deception, and power struggles in the early modern world...Bown's captivating study presents a fresh glimpse into the origins of the age of exploration and conquest as other nations challenged the primacy of Spain and Portugal." -- Publishers Weekly

Stephen R. Bown has been writing about adventurers, travellers and explorers for many years. His book Scurvy was an international critical success and was selected as one of the Globe and Mail's Top 100 books of 2004. Madness, Betrayal and the Lash was shortlisted for the Lela Common Award for History and won the BC Booksellers Choice Award; and finally, Merchant Kings, was shortlisted for the 2010 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. He lives in the Canadian Rockies with his wife and two children.

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