Roças, fazendas, engenhos, currais: a cartography of colonial rurality in the mines of Cuiabá (early eighteenth century)

Abstract

In this article we analyzed the formation of rural environments in the Minas do Cuiabá, in the first half of the eighteenth century. We use reports, essays, official correspondence, letters of sesmarias and cartographic documentation to reconstruct details of the spatialization of rurality in center of South America. We believe that a detailed study can serve to problematize studies that in other scales sought to characterize the formation of the rurality in the context of the expansion of the Portuguese conquests in the eighteenth century.