Making Tracks Toward the Environmental History of Brazil: A personal journey in historical geography

Autores

  • Stephen Bell University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21664/2238-8869.2014v3i2.p15-33

Resumo

This essay offers a brief personal history of engagement with the fields of historical geography and environmental history. Organized in three sections, working from past to present, the first part mainly reflects on research ideas gained while a student. Concern for the history of ideas about Brazilian land use led to interest in the important work of the German geographer Leo Waibel (1888-1951) concerning the tropics, and most especially Brazil. The second part of the essay reports on recent international research on Waibel. Some interamerican intellectual currents from Waibel’s career are explored for the first time, including his prescient preoccupation from 1939 to map “the catastrophic consequences†of deforestation across the tropical Americas. The work ends by drawing attention to the importance of the unpublished research of the University of California geographer Henry Bruman (1913-2005) on colonization in postwar Brazil. Although currently an obscure figure in Brazil, Bruman viewed himself as one of Waibel’s intellectual successors.

Keywords: Environmental History; Historical Geography; Migration; Colonization; Frontier.

Biografia do Autor

Stephen Bell, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Ph.D. em Geografia. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), EUA.

Referências

Aiton AS 1939. Institute of Latin-American Studies. Hispanic American Historical Review 19 (4): 561-63.
Arellano ARV 1963. Memorial to Paul Waitz (1876-1961). Geological Society of America Bulletin 74 (7): 107-11.
Bell S 1998. Campanha Gaúcha: A Brazilian Ranching System, 1850-1920. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Bell S 2010. A Life in Shadow: Aimé Bonpland in Southern South America, 1817-1858. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Blackbourn D 2006. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany. New York: W.W. Norton.
Bruman HJ 1945. Post-war Immigration Possibilities in Southern Brazil. Research Report R-112 of the U.S. Government “M” Project. Mimeo, 283 pp.
Bruman HJ 2000. Alcohol in Ancient Mexico. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Caviedes CN 2005. Tradiciones geográficas modernas en los países de América del Sur. In Bridging Cultural Geographies: Europe and Latin America, ed. Kent RB, Chabrera VO, Martí JS, 35-58. Castello de la Planá: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.
Chase S 1936. Rich Land, Poor Land: A Study of Waste in the Natural Resources of America. New York: Whittlesey House.
Clout H 2010. Professor Michael Williams, 1935-2009. Geographical Journal 176 (1): 111-14.
Cosgrove D, Daniels S (eds.) 1988. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Darby HC 1940. The Draining of the Fens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Darby HC 2002. The Relations of History and Geography: Studies in England, France and the United States. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Dean W 1976. Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820-1920. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Dean W 1995. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Emery F 1974. The Oxfordshire Landscape. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Field H 1962. ‘M’ Project for F.D.R.; Studies on Migration and Settlement. Ann Arbor MI: Edwards Brothers.
Freise FW 1939. Untersuchungen über die Folgen der Brandwirtschaft auf tropischen Boden. Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete der Küstenwalder Brasiliens. Der Tropenpflanzer: Zeitschrift für Tropische Landwirtschaft 42: 1-22.
Freyre G 1946. The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. 2d English-language ed. trans. Putnam S. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Galloway JH 1989. The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography From its Origins to 1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoffnung-Garskof J 2012. Latin American Studies and United States Foreign Policy. International Institute Journal, University of Michigan (Fall): 9-10.
Hoskins WG 1955. The Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Kent RB, Chabrera VO, Martí JS (eds.) 2005. Bridging Cultural Geographies: Europe and Latin America. Castello de la Planá: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.
Kohlhepp G 2013. Leo Waibels Bedeutung für die brasilianische Geographie und für die Forschungsbeziehungen zwischen Brasilien und Deutschland. In Leo Waibel - Zur Rezeption seiner Arbeiten in Brasilien, Afrika und Deutschland, ed. Schenk W, 12-46. Bergisch Gladbach: E. Ferger Verlag.
Mathews AS 2011. Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Mauch C, Trischler H, Culver L, Hou S, Ritson K (eds.) 2013. Making Tracks: Human and Environmental Histories. Munich: RCC Perspectives, no. 5.
McDowall D 1988. The Light: Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company Limited, 1899-1945. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Rens J 1987. Rencontres avec le siècle: une vie au service de la justice sociale. Paris: Duculot.
Roche J 1959. La colonisation allemande et le Rio Grande do Sul. Paris: Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique Latine.
Roche J 1969[1959]. A colonização alemã e o Rio Grande do Sul. 2 vols. trans. Ruas E. Porto Alegre: Editôra Globo.
Schenk W (ed.) 2013. Leo Waibel - Zur Rezeption seiner Arbeiten in Brasilien, Afrika und Deutschland. Colloquium Geographicum of the Geographical Institute, University of Bonn, vol. 34. Bergisch Gladbach: E. Ferger Verlag.
Schultze A 1937. Flammen in der Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg, vol. 45, pp. 59-226. Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg: Hamburg.
Scobie JR 1964. Revolution on the Pampas: A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860-1910. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Scobie JR 1974. Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870-1910. New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith N 2003. American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Spreckelsen T 2010. Ein Koffer voller Schmetterlinge. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 September.
Waibel L 1943. Place Names as an Aid in the Reconstruction of the Original Vegetation of Cuba. Geographical Review 33 (3): 376-96.
Waibel L 1955. Die Europäische Kolonisation Südbrasiliens. Colloquium Geographicum of the Geographical Institute, University of Bonn, vol. 4. Bonn: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlag.
Waibel L 1979[1958]. Capítulos de geografia tropical e do Brasil. 2d ed. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.
Waibel L 1979[1958]. A vegetação e o uso da terra no planalto central. In Waibel L. Capítulos de geografia tropical e do Brasil, 191-223. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.
Waitz P 1942. Los suelos de México y las posibilidades de futuros desarollos agrícolas. Irrigación en México 23 (6): 38-91.
Wakild E 2006. “It is to preserve life, to work for the trees”: The Steward of Mexico’s Forests, Miguel Angel Quevedo, 1862-1946. Forest History Today (Spring/Fall): 4-14.
Wells A 2009. Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press.
West RC 1979. Carl Sauer’s Fieldwork in Latin America. Dellplain Latin American Studies, vol. 3. Ann Arbor MI: University Microfilms International.
Williams M 1970. The Draining of the Somerset Levels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams M 1974. The Making of the South Australian Landscape: A Study in the Historical Geography of South Australia. London and New York: Academic Press.
Williams M 1988. Frank Vivian Emery, 1930-1987: An Appreciation. Journal of Historical Geography 14 (4): 451-54.
Williams M 2014. To Pass on a Good Earth: The Life and Work of Carl O. Sauer. Charlottesville VA and London: University of Virginia Press.
Zeckau H, Zischler H 2010. Der Schmetterlingskoffer. Berlin: Verlag Galiani.

Publicado

2014-12-28

Como Citar

BELL, Stephen. Making Tracks Toward the Environmental History of Brazil: A personal journey in historical geography. Fronteira: Journal of Social, Technological and Environmental Science, [S. l.], v. 3, n. 2, p. 15–33, 2014. DOI: 10.21664/2238-8869.2014v3i2.p15-33. Disponível em: https://revistas2.unievangelica.edu.br/index.php/fronteiras/article/view/1000. Acesso em: 21 nov. 2024.

Edição

Seção

Dossiê - Cultura, História e Biodiversidade