Mapping South American Promises: Potosí, Brazil, and European Visions

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-69510-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 7, 268 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Mapping the Past

“Nomen est omen”. A name is a prophecy, a destiny, or even a promise. Why was South America once referred to as Peru, “Peruana”, or “América Peruana”? What role did the Potosí Mountain play in shaping these designations? And how did these perceptions affect the lands of Brazil? This book offers new insights into these questions, exploring both the continuities and the shifts in European representations of South America. It reveals how, in the first two centuries of its history, Brazil compensated for the scarcity of gold and silver with brazilwood, sugar, the labor and souls of its indigenous peoples, the toil of enslaved Africans, and its geography.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Doré, Andréa

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historische Geographie, Landkarten & Atlanten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Preface to the English Language Edition

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Introduction

Part 1: Describing a Continent Called Peruana

1 Naming a Continent

2 Potosí, the Mountain of Silver

3 Image Matrices 1 Peruana 2 Blaeu’s Mural Map 3 Cosmography-Maps 4 Images by Arnoldus Montanus

Part 2: From Mirage to Mines

4 “Pedestrian Realism” in Portuguese Cartography

5 Between Vapors and Earthquakes: the Origin of Metals and the Lands of Brazil

6 The Portuguese in Peru: Ambitious and Suspect

Conclusions: the Anti-shaman

Works Cited

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Andréa Doré, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil. Her main interests are the Iberian territories in the early modern period, with an emphasis on their geographical descriptions through maps and reports. She has published several articles and book chapters on these topics, as well as the book Sitiados. Os cercos às fortalezas portuguesas na Índia (Alameda 2010).