Thinking history on filled territories: the importance of the concept of Brazilian biomes

• Autor(a) principal: Pádua, José Augusto
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Históricos (Rio de Janeiro)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/reh/article/view/90181
• topic: Environmental history; Territoriality; Biomes; Forests; Savannahs.; História ambiental; Territorialidade; Biomas; Florestas; Savanas.

The article defends the importance of the concept of Brazilian biomes, both for historical-environmental analysisand for the development of legislation and public policies aimed at conserving the natural world. In additionto discussing the general lines of the concept genealogy, it argues that it is especially useful for visualizingthe territorial construction of the country as a whole, while presenting clear limits for a more detailed regionaland micro-regional analysis. The synthetic representation of biomes facilitates a synoptic perception of Brazil’secological regions. This perception is in line with the adoption of a basic methodological premise of environmentalhistory: the need to investigate the movement of human societies in the context of territories filled and colored bythe diversity of living beings and geological dynamics that exist concretely in the different spaces of the planet.That is, to overcome the simplification presented by a cartography that is only political and centered exclusivelyon human action. Finally, the article analyzes some examples of the rich historiography that already exists on thehistory of biomes, drawing attention to the importance of getting to know the production that is emerging in thevarious regions of the country, both in academic spaces and in literature in general.