Descrição
Os sertões foram conquistados e ocupados aos poucos, com base em um conhecimento dividido entre mito e realidade. Criou-se assim uma “geografia imaginária” sobre os sertões dos dois lados do Atlântico, que começou a ser superada com mais vigor no século XVIII. Até então, o interior do continente constituía um extenso vazio cartográfico que, a partir daí, começou a ser preenchido. Esse preenchimento somente foi possível, a exemplo do que ocorreu com a própria expansão pelos sertões, por uma estreita interpendência entre as ações da Coroa e as dos particulares.||The sertões (backlands, hinterland) were conquered and occupied slowly, in a process characterized by the tension between myth and reality, which generated what we can designate as an “imaginary geography” in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This kind of geography, which lasted until the 18th Century, is marked by a cartographic vacuum in what refers to the backlands. This vacuum began to be fulfilled at that time, in a process that was made possible by the cooperation between Portuguese authorities and the sertanistas, as it was the case with territorial expansion itself.||The sertões (backlands, hinterland) were conquered and occupied slowly, in a process characterized by the tension between myth and reality, which generated what we can designate as an “imaginary geography” in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This kind of geography, which lasted until the 18th Century, is marked by a cartographic vacuum in what refers to the backlands. This vacuum began to be fulfilled at that time, in a process that was made possible by the cooperation between Portuguese authorities and thesertanistas, as it was the case with territorial expansion itself.
