« L’état d’esprit » du sertão dans ses dessins cartographiques

Abstract

The inhabited hinterland has been the subject of historical investigation in the history of colonial Brazil since the controversy that pit Sérgio Buarque de Holanda against Jaime Cortesão. The « sertão as a state of mind », one of the epistemological legacies of the Anglo-Saxon historian John Russell-Wood, fueled this research. Cartography offers a visual perspective of this existential hinterland that so intrigued great names in Brazilian historiography.

Keywords

• backlands
• territorial limits
• territorial rights
• collective human rights
• right of control over natural resources
• colonial Brazil