Pierre Monbeig and the Geohistory of Brazil

Abstract

A long-established research theme in the realm of the intellectual history of the human sciences in Brazil, consists of identifying the different ways in which national scientific communities were shaped by French mentalities, since the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Letters of the University of Sao Paulo, the first Brazilian university, was founded by a French international mission, sent to Brazil, in 1934. However, the direction of influence can also be seen in plural perspectives as a subject of research, and by trying to reach a complex combination about how a different manner of thinking about the formation of capitalism in a peripheral country was also produced in Brazil. How did the Brazilian context and Brazil’s territory help to shape French geographical epistemology? Rooted in the influence of Vidal de la Blache, Fernand Braudel and Brazil’s territory (as a space of conception), my major hypothesis is that the young French geographer Pierre Monbeig, conceived an original geohistory of Brazil, in its principles, in parallel, and in harmony with the geohistory of the Mediterranean world.