A New Map of Hereditary Captaincies
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Cintra, J.
1ESCOLA POLITÉCNICA DA USP Email: jpcintra@usp.br
Abstract
In the years of 1534-1536, the Portuguese America met his first administrative and territorial division through the system known as hereditary captaincies. The dividing lines between the various territories suffered plenty of changes over time and is not conserved any map of the initial division. The first map of these administrative divisions, assigned to Luis Teixeira, portrays, inaccurately, the situation that prevailed in 1586, some 50 years later. Is due to Varnhagen, the father of Brazilian historiography, the first mapping that sought to portray the hereditary captaincies in the moment of its creation. His work was praised by many historians and, with very small variations, remained intact until today, and was reproduced in every book, with scientific or didactic purpose. This paper reconstructs this map showing some failures of the model of Varnhagen. In summary, the changes occur at the extremes of the map: to the south, the northern lot of the Captaincy of São Vicente, owned by Martim Afonso de Sousa, has lines running northwest and not west, and this modifies the boundaries with their neighbors. To the north, the boundary lines, as shown in this work, follow meridians and not parallels. To establish the new map we employ the original documents of Torre do Tombo (Portugal), copies of contemporary documents and maps of the time, especially the one of Bartolomeu Velho. The present work is based on an article already published in the Proceedings of the museums, but presents the subject in a new light: rather than discussing the mistakes, we seek to build directly a new map that corrects a misconception that has more than 160 years.
Keywords
Hereditary Captaincies; New Map; Varnhagen