Os mapas do Brasil na engenharia militar portuguesa : (1750-1822)

Abstract

The maps of Brazil and neighbor countries which belong to the Estudos Arqueológicos de Engenharia Militar from the old Direcção dos Serviços de Engenharia do Exército Português (now Direcção de Infraestruturas) are a cartographic collection of great value - probably the most important about Brazilian territory (in the 18th and 19th centuries) in Portugal. This cartographic collection is complementary to the existing collections in Arquivo Histórico do Exército (Rio de Janeiro) and Mapoteca do Ministério das Relações Exteriores (Rio de Janeiro). Although this collection has in its majority manuscript maps of the Brazilian colonial period (1750-1822) it has another important printed maps. The collection (which also has documents about Portugal and it's colonial empire) was recently catalogued and fully digitized for the Project SIDCarta (Sistema de informação para documentação cartográfica: o espólio da engenharia militar portuguesa / Information system for cartographic documents: the Portuguese military engineering assets) between 2002 and 2005. This collection is far from being truly known although is available online. Our aim in this paper is to familiarize the public with this collection through it's most important aspects (such as: chronology, authorship, type of documents, scales and most common geographic areas) and through the analysis of it’s main maps regarding Cartographic History and the Brazilian-Portuguese modern and contemporary history.