Historiographic approaches in Geography in Brazil: the case of geographical societies in countries of colonial past

• Grant number: 21/07316-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2021
• End date: September 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Manoel Fernandes de Sousa Neto
• Grantee: Gabriela Gonzalez Furia
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Our research portrays a critic to the historiography of the history of geography produced in Brazil, namely about the geographical institutions that were central to the country in the nineteenth, viz. the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB), the Sociedade de Geografia do Rio de Janeiro (SGRJ) and a branch of the Sociedade Geográfica de Lisboa (SGL). In the current research, we comprehend the geographical societies played a fundamental role in the capital's universalisation process, especially from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. This process, for one inherent to capital's functionality, had as major agents the fellows of these societies. What happened, thus, was the materialisation of the central countries' imperialist projects in peripheric territories, which whether were or had been a colony. The geographical societies, however, and especially Brazil's geographical societies, for they are the target of our research, are depicted in its historiography as to disguise such reality. (AU)