“Victim of the Archive Dust”: Cândido Mendes and the Projects to Create the Province in the Northern Cape of Brazil (1853-1873)

Abstract

Back in 1853, a bill was processed in the Legislative Assembly of the Empire of Brazil that provided for the restructuring of the national space, through the creation of the Province of Oiapóquia, with the aim of enabling control of the territory of Brazilian Guiana, also known as North Cape. The proposal devised by Senator Cândido Mendes de Almeida was based on the premise of the threat of a North American invasion and annexation of the Amazon region. In 1873, the project was processed again, redesigned, under the proposal to create the province under the name of Pinzônia. In this article my scope is to analyze the role of Cândido Mendes de Almeida in the preparation of projects to create a province in the North Cape of the Brazilian Empire throughout the third quarter of the 19th century. For this, I mobilize newspaper news, projects created by Brazilian scholars, as well as contemporary cartographic records as sources. Through these sources, it becomes possible to think about how the projects for dividing the country into provinces aimed to establish and maintain the integrity of the national territory.