Abstract
In this work we discuss the expansion politics and proposals of territorial control for the borderland zone between the backwoods of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais in the 19th century. We aim at presenting the ways in which the local authorities of these provinces planned the colonization of indigenous lands, as well as identifying some of their territorial strategies. We focus our analysis in the area between Campos (RJ) and Muriae (MG), with the intention of comprehending how the project of civilizing the Natives contributed for the political and economic transformation of this wide region, which resulted in territorial conflicts that expressed different uses and projects for that territory.
Highlights
The backwoods’ occupation proposals were tied to a policy marked by two main goals: the land regulation and the installation of a new model of land occupation within indigenous patrimony.Inherited from the Marquis of Pombal’s modernizing project, in the mid XIX century, this policy featured the creation of bureaus intended to manage the indigenous homeland
The idea was to expand the “arms” of the State to the different areas occupied by the natives, trying to integrate those areas into the more economically developed regions
The first moment of the indigenous land appropriation is related to the colonization process and has, as its precursor elements, the ideological discourses on the backwoods, deserts, and confines
Summary
The backwoods’ occupation proposals were tied to a policy marked by two main goals: the land regulation and the installation of a new model of land occupation within indigenous patrimony. It was the birth of a new territory, under the domain of new social agents Along these lines, as previously mentioned, the promulgation of the Regulation on the Catechesis and Civilization Missions (1845) operated as one of the main strategies to alter the statute of the land occupied by the natives, process that can be divided in two moments: i.) the first, of a more symbolic order, created the representation of the region as an area of conflict through the narratives that the employees of the Crown, travelers missionaries, etc, would make about the episodes involving conflicts among squatters, representatives of the municipal Chambers, missionaries, farmers, and indigenous peoples; ii.) the second, of a material order, but which facilitated the dissemination of the values, develop into the installation of infrastructures that aimed at optimizing the navigation on the rivers Doce, Muriaé, and Paraíba and expanding the intra and inter-regional commerce on the provinces, as well as towns, chapels, and settlements. It was the power and efficacy of the local and regional forces that defined the limits of the borders of this wide backwoods, guaranteeing the material appropriation of the natives’ lands
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