Descriptions of America: Natural History, circulation of ideas and the territorial formation of Brazil (16th to 18th centuries)

Abstract

One notable thing in the descriptions of America is the presence of the elements of nature, specially between the 16th and the 17th centuries. The same feature can be found in the letters and chronicles written by the jesuits missionaries in Portuguese America. The production of knowledge about the natural world was one of the strategies of conquer and occupation of the coastline. Using the letters as a starting point, our intention in this article is to show how those texts, written by missionaries and colonists, contributed to the delineation of the geographical limits of Brazil. Sharing the expirience of living in America, they had an importante role in the construction of the Portugueses territory in the New World.