Amorim Girão's 'The descriptions of the voyages of 16th and 17th centuries and Human geography': a note on The History of Portuguese Geography

Abstract

Aristides de Amorim Girão (1895-1960) -the first Portuguese geographer to submit a doctoral thesis to the University- presented 'As descrições das viagens dos séculos XVI e XVII e a Geografia humana' [Descriptions of 16th and 17th century travel and Human Geography] to the XVI International Congress of Geography, held in Lisbon in 1949. The character of the international audience is certainly not unrelated to the general tone of the lecture - markedly anti-determinist and with some hints of organic humanism and national-catholicist spiritualism-, nor to the chosen theme: the geographical descriptions of missionary travellers in the 16th and 17th centuries.