When the herbarium Scientific Enlightenment: Manuel
Arruda da Câmara and his writings botanists *
José Otávio Aguiar
Universidade Federal de Campina Gande
In the article, we investigate the interrelationships between nature and culture in the work
of naturalist traveler Manuel Arruda da Camara, from the analytical reading of his writings
botanists dedicated to the hinterland of the provinces of Portuguese America during the
transition Cologne Empire. I hope to meet and merge traces that shed light on the social and
political region that drove the race for exploitation of natural resources pro-trade of the
Portuguese crown, placing travel and scientific exploration financed as possible applications of
the concepts of utility-naturalism, influenced in near the conceptions neofisiocratas then in
vogue. This allows us to detect the uniqueness of the observations and experiences Arruda,
opening the field for future research on the interrelationships of the companies with the nature
of the hinterlands from the fragments of descriptions of the natural landscape in order to
establish an environmental and human landscape of the provinces Northeast in the late
eighteenth century colonial and the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Keywords: Botany; Environmental History; Reformism Illustrated History of Biology.
*
This communication is part of the panel Strategies of insertion of the minor nobility of the land:
Portuguese America – 16th to 19th centuries.