Conquests as Recorded on Maps

Portuguese and other European mapmakers were “representational go-betweens” who provided new information and helped to fashion dramatically different understandings of the world based on their explorations of Africa, Asia, and parts of the Americas. In this paper I look at early sixteenth-century maps and sea charts relating to Brazil in order to examine the changing nature of Portuguese descriptions of landscapes and peoples following upon contact and conquest. Tracing how mapmaking developed and conveyed information to a variety of audiences, early maps display images of how Europeans understood and represented indigenous people, new environments, especially flora and fauna, boundaries between areas Europeans claimed to possess, and even show go-betweens who were necessary to the process of “winning” Brazil for the Portuguese.