Landscapes of the Territorial Frontier. Geographical Relations of the 16th Century as Archival Sources for Environmental History
Through a contextual analysis, we demonstrate how Philip II's 1577 Royal Decree, "Instrucción y Memoria", commonly known as Relaciones Geográficas, serves as a key resource for understanding the colonial environmental history of Hispanic America. We consider two aspects. Firs...
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Recursos: | Centro Universitário de Anápolis (UniEVANGÉLICA) |
| Repositorio: | Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña |
| Idioma: | español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs2.www.halacsolcha.org:article/503 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://www.halacsolcha.org/index.php/halac/article/view/503 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Border spaces Hispanic America alterity. fronteras Hispanoamérica alteridad. |
| Resumo: | Through a contextual analysis, we demonstrate how Philip II's 1577 Royal Decree, "Instrucción y Memoria", commonly known as Relaciones Geográficas, serves as a key resource for understanding the colonial environmental history of Hispanic America. We consider two aspects. First, as an official text that conveys information from a specific time—the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—the document demonstrates how diverse and different ways of interpreting (by Europeans) or making known (for Americans) places and landscapes converged. Second, the decree provided a way for the Spanish Crown to recognize geographies unknown to it within its imperial borders. On this latter point, we are particularly interested in the description of the possible geographical expressions of the connectivity between Spain and its colonial territorial boundaries. Thus, we find the analysis of Relaciones Geográficas from these perspectives necessary and pertinent. Within the framework of Latin American environmental history, research has concentrated on the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the colonial period—and the 16th century in particular—is crucial to understanding ruptures and transitions, and impositions and adaptations, in the radically changing cultural and environmental contexts of the Americas. Relaciones Geográficas is, therefore, a window into ways of interpreting and living nature in this historical period; a representative conception of the border spaces. |
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