Brazilian boundaries: critical edition of diplomatic documents, 1831-1840

Abstract

Many efforts have been made in order to identify, to collect, to classify and to edit written sources relating to Brazilian foreign policy, producing thus tools which have allowed access to documents that before was limited to archives and to a few number of researchers. Despite those efforts, several pieces concerning this subject still remain unpublished on their institutions of custody. These documents contain a wide and valuable universe of information for studies in areas such as political and geographical thought as well as diplomatic history and international relations of Brazil and for that reason publishing them will provide important support to future researchesTherefore, the aim of this project is to exhaustively identify documents regarding the negotiations of territorial limits of the state, between 1831 and 1840, to edit and gather them together on a finding aid. The result will be a digital and printed critical edition of the documents which is expected to assist researchers in several areas.As researches on international relations grow in the country, there is an ever-increasing demand for essential information sources, which are held in public or private archives. The access to these documents has often been impaired either because of a difficulty in accessing the institutions of custody or of a difficulty in understanding the language and orthography of texts which were elaborated in the nineteenth century. And although some initiatives have enabled a growth of access to these sources, so far no work with the intention of identifying and gathering together, on a finding aid, documents related to Brazilian boundaries during the monarchic regime has been produced. The majority of works on which were edited Brazilian foreign policy sources, such as Actos diplomáticos do Brasil by José M. Cardoso de Oliveira or recently Diplomacia Brasileira e Política Externa by Eugênio Vargas Garcia has left aside documents produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, such as official correspondence and instructions given to the diplomatic agents abroad during the period.The studies on international relations and law have shown problems that have persisted from the making of modern territorial nation-state until the emergence of new countries around the world due to the end of European colonial empires and of USSR and Yugoslavia. According to the United Nations, the number of member states increased from fifty-one in 1945 to one hundred and ninety-two in 1996. There are currently territorial disputes among states in the international context and, with a view to decreasing the use of force, part of these disputes have been brought to the International Court of Justice, judicial organ of the UN. Since 1947, approximately twenty six cases referring to sovereignty over areas throughout the globe were brought to the organ and most of them are located in economically peripheral or semi-peripheral regions. And in spite of more intense forms of economic and informational globalization, the matters of territory, international boundaries, and sovereignty remain as relevant as ever. (AU)