The Atlas do Império do Brazil and the existing representations in the book “History of Private Life in Brazil: Empire: the court and national modernity”.

Abstract

This article analyzes the cartographic iconography presented in Luiz Felipe de Alencastro (ed.) História da vida privada no Brasil. Império: a corte e a modernidade nacional. São Paulo: Companhia da Letras, 1997. The objective of this analysis is to critically identify how mappings, or any other iconographic element, have a history itself, built on the basis of their own cultural and relevant to the time of its creation. Its use as support to simple textual historiography creates new elements of perception in the observer not relevant to its original documentary function but indirectly compromising possible critical analyses of historical development.