Arena of traits: The writings of Carl von Martius and Francisco Freire Alemão in the composition of a national historiography

Abstract

Starting from the intellectual affinities among botanists Carl Friedrich von Martius and Francisco Freire Alemão, this article aims to investigate the role of the history writing advocated by Martius in formatting a historical and ideological project to the Brazilian nation. In a period in which the intelligentsia focused on the possibility of establishing landmarks for an emerging nation in the light of nineteenth-century culture, Martius argues that nature would be the reading key to understand the discontinuities in the experiences of time and civility in the tropics. In a period in which the exploratory voyages to the New World had an important economic role, politically and strategically, sending a committee formed exclusively by Brazilian scientists to the interior of Brazil conjures up the search for insertion in the set of civilized nations. The account of this journey, made by Freire Alemão, demonstrates the power of writing as a discursive operator as it arranges viewings and senses in a narrative that seeks to integrate the hinterlands to the rest of the Brazilian empire.

Keywords: history writing, travel report, nineteenth-century culture.