Travellers and the construction of an image of Brazil in the fall of the colonization (1808-1822)

Abstract

When the Court of Portugal moves to Rio de Janeiro, in 1808, a series of changes take place with the ports opening and the arrival of many travellers, what leads, according to Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, to a “rediscovery of Brazil”. Through drawings, travel accounts, colections and classifications, an “imaginative geography” of the Empire is constructed, specially by naturalist travellers. Putting together the new material basis that is constructed – from an unheard situation, that is the presence of the Metropolis in the tropics – and the new foreign ideas, from which the brazilian nature is investigated, it’s possibile to reach some important contributions to the study of the process of “brazilian identity” formation, which will be essencially based on its territory and it’s nature.