Marine or countryside? Madrid, Wasthington, Brasília and the controversies on the logic behind their placement: colonization and development of territories in a geo-history of the capitalist world-economy

• Grant number: 20/05637-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2022
• End date: May 15, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa
• Grantee: Larissa Alves de Lira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (IEB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/15303-8 - Controversies around the location of the United States capital and the material production of the territory: proposed association of territorial dynamics to the theory of systemic cycles of accumulation, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Historian Fernand Braudel, considered by many also a geographer, started associating the history of world-economy to that of its capitals in his book The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Time of Felipe II. He attributed to the imperial reasoning behind the transference of the capital to Madrid the blame for the decadence of the Habsburg Empire, pointing out the importance of a capital. In this project the location of the capitals is seen as an important fact of the historical conquest of space by mankind and as a strategy for colonization and long-term economic development in an interdisciplinary approach. This research has three main goals. Firstly, to analyze, based on primary sources, the controversies created during the process of choosing the location of three capitals, namely Madrid (dated 1561), Washington (1791), and Brasília (1955). From these controversies and geographical sources, this research aims to reveal the ideas that are common to colonization and development of national territories and which are rooted in the process of spatial conquest through the choices of capitals, their designs, and the establishment of their first pathways. Finally, this research aims to develop a geo-historical typology (relative to the association between geography and history) on the different ways of territorial conquest in key regions and key moments of the capitalist world-economy (the ascension to the fall of the Spanish empire, North-American hegemony, and the first signs of ascension of the periphery as an autonomous unity). Based on the geo-historical methodology of Fernand Braudel and in the conceptualization of Giovanni Arrighi, this research's guiding question is: Do the choices of placement and location of these capitals represent different ways of considering the conquest of space and are they inserted in the lasting tension between ""territorialism"", ""capitalism"", and a mixed way of development? Two main results (one qualitative and the other cartographic) are expected: 1 - the establishment a geographic typology for colonization that is an expression of different kinds of development; 2- the elaboration of cartographic models. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

LARISSA ALVES DE LIRA. A geografia em ação: as lógicas de colonização do território brasileiro a partir das controvérsias epistemológicas sobre a nova localização da sua capital (1947-1955). GEOUSP, v. 28, n. 1, 2024-06-17. (20/05637-0)