TERRITORIAL CONTRASTS IN PORTUGUESE AMERICA:

EXTREME SLOWNESS AND AN ATLANTIC NETWORK OF PEOPLE AND IDEAS

Abstract

 Territories are made up of contrasts that become more apparent the more we study them. The
same goes for territories of the past. In this research, we seek to present two apparently opposing perspectives that simultaneously made up Portuguese America: "extreme slowness" and an Atlantic network of people and ideas. Both topics are approached from the writings of the French botanist Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, either from his own experiences at the beginning of the 19th century, or from secondary accounts contained in his work. The analysis of these territorial contrasts is supported by the geographical perspective, which emphasizes the scalar nature of phenomena, constantly overlapping and reconsidering them in the light of history and its irregularities, with the use of correspondence from the Portuguese administration at the time. In our view, geography has largely contributed to studies on the territories of the past, beyond cartography and other visual products. Geographical reasoning spatializes phenomena, locating them in a specific structure, conferring upon them not only certain attributions but, above all, correlating them with other phenomena located on different scales. Based on the necessary dialectic of this inter-scalar movement, we propose an apparently contradictory conceptualization of a territory that could be both "extremely slow" and connected to an ocean of people and ideas, having the backlands ("sertão") a key-participation in this dynamic.