From the “Roteiro de todos os Sinais da Costa” to the “Carta Geral” the Synthesis Maps for the Territory of the Portuguese America and Brazil Empire

Abstract

The story involving the conquest, occupation and demarcation of the territory of Portuguese America, and later the
Empire of Brazil, over nearly four hundred years, is recorded in countless cartographic documents. This set are the
ones that can be considered as maps of synthesis. From the study of these documents and the lifting of the key determinants for their productions, it appears that they dated from about the end of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, not only bring important information to the knowledge of that history, but to many others
involving the advancement of technical knowledge and geographical observed throughout this period. Basement with
this information you can also say that private interests guided the mapping initiatives and knowledge of the territory
in its first two hundred years of existence, having been gradually replaced by those of the Portuguese Crown and the
Imperial Government in the past. Thus, the documents Roteiro de todos os sinaes conhecimtos, fundos, baixos, Alturas,
ederrotas, que ha na Costa do Brasil desdo cabo de Sãto Agostinho até o estreito de Fernão de Magalhaẽs and the
MAPA Da maior parte Da Costa, e Sertão, do BRAZIL. Extraido do original do Pe. Cocleo, respectively produced
in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resulted, the first state with some planning, the need for assistance to
private interests, ranging from grantees of hereditary captaincy by religious orders such as that of the Jesuits. The
documents identified as a synthesis for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the CARTA GEOGRAPHICA DE PROJECÇÃO
ESPHERICA E ORTOGONAL DA NOVA LUZITANIA ou América Portugueza e Estado do Brazil and the Carta Geral do Império,
clearly resulted from the intervention of the State and will know the territory Brazil, involving economic reasons and
issues of territory and boundaries with neighboring countries.