{"id":207535,"date":"2015-09-15T15:43:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=207535"},"modified":"2015-12-28T15:53:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T17:53:11","slug":"the-first-shapes-of-the-province","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-first-shapes-of-the-province\/","title":{"rendered":"The first shapes of the province"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mappa

Public Archives of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/span><\/a> Mappa chorographico da provincia de S\u00e3o Paulo<\/em>, dated 1841: consulted by public officials, intellectuals, and travelersPublic Archives of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Western S\u00e3o Paulo State looks like an \u201cunknown sert\u00e3o<\/i><\/em>\u201d without a single mention of its indigenous populations, but the region near the coast is quite detailed on the 1841 Mappa chorographico da provincia de S\u00e3o Paulo<\/i><\/em> (Descriptive Map of the Province of S\u00e3o Paulo), the first printed map to represent the entire province of S\u00e3o Paulo and become a tool for management of the territory.\u00a0 Printed in Paris in 1841, the first copies\u2014about 100\u2014came into the hands of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly a year later.\u00a0 Since 1835 the legislators had longed for maps to help them administer the province after they had won relative autonomy for tax assessment under constitutional reforms that followed the 1831 abdication of Dom Pedro I.<\/p>\n

Daniel Pedro M\u00fcller, a military engineer, was chosen to make the map.\u00a0 \u201cIn 1835, M\u00fcller was the most experienced and well-trained military engineer in the province of S\u00e3o Paulo, the best suited for carrying out that task,\u201d observes Jos\u00e9 Rog\u00e9rio Beier, a historian who since 2012 has been studying the map at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) under his advisor, Professor Iris Kantor.\u00a0 M\u00fcller worked from personal notes and observations made by other engineers in the service of the Crown in making his own graphic representation of the province, which at the time included part of the present state of Paran\u00e1.<\/p>\n

\"Map

Public Archives of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/span><\/a> Map mistakenly attributed to M\u00fcller, without confirmation of authorship; the hamlet of Pinheiros is likely the current city of ValinhosPublic Archives of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Born in Portugal to German parents, M\u00fcller studied at the Royal Academy of the Navy of Portugal and moved to Brazil in 1802, at age 17, as an aide to the governor of the captaincy.\u00a0 As engineer, he completed several construction projects like the Piques road, now Rua de Consola\u00e7\u00e3o, and the fountain in what is now Largo da Mem\u00f3ria, in Anhangaba\u00fa.\u00a0 As a member of the military, Muller participated in the campaign against a threat of an attack by the Spaniards in 1819 and in the Cisplatine War against Argentina in 1825.\u00a0 He returned to S\u00e3o Paulo as a retired field marshal.\u00a0 In 1835, the newly-instituted Legislative Assembly gave him a two-part order: organize the statistics and prepare a map of the province.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe order from the Legislative Assembly for a map and a population and economic census suggests that the political elite were concerned about occupying the territory and developing an infrastructure of roads and communications with the port of Santos, as well as about the ability to expand territorial occupation toward the west,\u201d Kantor observes.\u00a0 \u201cThe survey and the map drawn by Pedro M\u00fcller enabled S\u00e3o Paulo officials to consolidate a plan for autonomy and affirmation of economic interests starting in 1835,\u201d Beier concludes.<\/p>\n

\"Obelisk

Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/a> Obelisk on Largo da Mem\u00f3ria, in the center of S\u00e3o Paulo: one of the works by M\u00fcllerWikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Because of the lack of an appropriate print shop in Brazil, the map, which measures 102.4 x 151.6 centimeters, was sent to Paris, then a worldwide center of cartographic production.\u00a0 The copies \u201ccirculated not only among agencies of the provincial administration and the court, but also among academies of science like the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute, and travelers like Sir Richard Francis Burton,\u201d observed Beier in an article published in 2014 in the journal Tempos Hist\u00f3ricos<\/i><\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the midst of his research, Beier found a map attributed to M\u00fcller in the Public Archives of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, indicating a new road to be opened to a hamlet known as Pinheiros.\u00a0 He examined it with \u00c9lzio Jos\u00e9 da Silva, coordinator of the cartography section of the archive.\u00a0 \u201cWe didn\u2019t find any evidence that the map was made by M\u00fcller.\u00a0 There is no signature and the calligraphy doesn\u2019t match that of the retired field marshal,\u201d says Beier.\u00a0 \u201cFurthermore, the map does not describe a road to what is now the district of Pinheiros in the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, but rather a route to a village near what was then the town of S\u00e3o Carlos, now Campinas.\u00a0 The village of Pinheiros represented on the map is most probably the current municipality of Valinhos, known at the time as Pouso dos Pinheiros.\u201d\u00a0M\u00fcller had a house near the Pinheiros River.\u00a0 In 1842, indebted and distressed, he committed suicide by drowning himself in that river.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first large map of S\u00e3o Paulo facilitated the layout of streets","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[228,241],"coauthors":[5968,662],"class_list":["post-207535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-engineering","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207535"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=207535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}