Iberian geopolitics and the measure of the world: the role of Spain in the geodesic mission of Quito (1735 e 1746)

• Grant number: 17/08245-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date until: July 01, 2017
• End date until: December 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Science
• Principal Investigator: Denise Aparecida Soares de Moura
• Grantee: Patricia dos Santos de Carvalho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 17/20901-3 - Iberian geopolitics and the measure of the world: the role of Spain in Geodesic Mission of Quito (1735 e 1746), BE.EP.IC

Abstract

Conceptualize the Spanish participation in the measurement works of a terrestrial meridian arc of the scientific mission occurred between 1735 to 1746 and organized by Spain and France's monarchies. I suspect that this participation has had the intention to mark a place of the Hispanic scientific production in the greater environment of European science, but also of marking a political position of the Hispanic Empire in front of the Portuguese territorial usurpations and French imperialist pretensions about the Amazon basin. To conduct this verification I will make use of the dissertations Relacion histórica del viajen a la América Meridional ... para medir algunos grados de meridianos terrestre (1748), Observaciones astronómicas y físicas hechas ... en los Reynos del Peru ... de las quales se deduce la figura de la Tierra y se aplica a la Navegacion (1748), and Dissertacion historica, y geographica sobre el meridiano de demarcacion entre los dominios de España, y Portugal, y los parages por donde passa en la America Meridional...( 1749). A work as this one promises to contribute to reforce the contemporary debate that defends the Iberian protagonism in modern science, but also to conceptualize the Iberian internacional policy which has been divided among the dispute between two catholic monarchies and the English and French pretentions about their Atlantic overseas domains. (AU)