By the end of the seventeenth century, the Portuguese government claimed ownership of a large amount of cartographic information. The result was that D. Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho, Minister of the Portuguese Navy and Foreign Domains, gave an order that a “General Map of Brazil” should be made. The person appointed to organize the project was Dr. Antonio Pires da Silva Pontes.
Headed by Silva Pontes, a group of designers, geographers and cosmographers, all of them in some way linked to Portuguese and Portuguese colonial cartography, compiled the Map of New Lusitania in 1798. They made use of the best information
Fig. 11.2 Map of New Lusitania by Silva Pontes
Available, especially data that had been used for border demarcations which depicted places by '"their true latitude and longitude positioning”.
Draughtsman Dr. Antonio Pires da Silva Pontes Leme had, at his disposal, the services of Jose Joaquim Freire and Manoel Tavares da Fonseca. An Italian engineer and astronomer, Miguel AntcSnio Ciera assisted the team with astronomical observations. Ciera came to Portugal in the mid-eighteenth century to assist the commission entrusted with the demarcation of the borders of Portuguese possessions in southern America. Figure 11.2 shows the Chart of New Lusitania.
This Map was named "Geographical Map on a Spherical Orthogonal Projection of New Luzitdnia or the State of Brazil” (Carta Geografica de Projecao Esferica Ortogonal da Nova Luzitania ou Estado do Brazil), as is shown in its legend. Apart from the legend, which is long and explanatory, it also contains the names of the organizer, the draughtsmen, and 34 individuals and cartographic authorities who supported the venture, amongst them priests, doctors, militarists, scientists and explorers, making up an important list of names linked to Portuguese and Brazilian cartography.
The spherical orthogonal projection, which was used in apparently the same way as the equivalent projection of Sanson-Flamsteed, a projection of which the meridians are curved with the concavity centred on the central meridian. In the case of the latter, the meridian was 315°, which runs through the Ferro Island. The central meridian is projected as a straight line and each parallel is projected as equidistant with all parallels being straight lines. The graphic scale of the map corresponds to 1: 3,865,000.
Only two extant copies of this map are known, one kept in the Tombo Tower in Lisbon, Portugal, and the other is in the fifth Survey Division of the Brazilian Army Geographical Service in Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian copy was obtained from the royal family in 1808. Another copy, made in the mid-nineteenth century, is held by the Map Library of the Brazilian Foreigners Affair Ministry in Rio de Janeiro.
Noteworthy on this map is the wealth of detail relating mainly to place names of the hydrographic network, as well as to mountains, cities and villages. Another interesting phenomenon on the map is the many quite accurate locations of Indian tribes which once inhabited the rural areas.
It is probably correct to infer that Brazilian systematic cartography had its real beginning with this map and the cartography of the people who demarcated the borders. Amongst them is Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Franco de Almeida Serra, whose name is linked to the history of Fort de Coimbra in Mato Grosso do Sul and to border demarcations in Brazil’s center-west.
World History
