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PICTURE 1 - The Plata Region. Montanus, De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld... Mapoteca do
Itamaraty, Rio de Janeiro. Mapa da parte meridional do Brasil e de toda bacia platina, assinalando
as missões, aldeias indígenas, etc. In O Exército na História do Brasil: Colônia, p. 152, de
CARVALHO, L.P.M. (Org.) Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército; Salvador: Odebrecht, 1998.
Créditos Iconográficos, p. 259.
invasions of Brazil in 1763 and 1774. Without major natural boundaries separating
it from the so called “continente” of São Pedro do Rio Grande, the Banda Oriental
constituted a natural starting point for an expansion that could reach Santa Catarina,
a goal explicit in the thinking and writing of politicians of Spain and the Plata. Such
ambition was exemplified in the temporary occupation of the island of Santa Catarina
by the fleet of D. Pedro Ceballos in 1777. The Portuguese, in turn, recognizing the
unsustainability of Colonia do Sacramento on Banda Oriental (1680) - in some extent
an adventure fueled by trade, smuggling and “mercantilism à Colbert” (CESAR, 1969,
p. 38) - had occupied since the mid-eighteenth century the territory to the north of the
Rio Jaguarão, thanks to the fortification of the island of Santa Catarina and the entrance
of the channel of Rio Grande, irradiating from this last position the colonization of the
interior of the so- called São Pedro’s continent, based on Azorean immigration, and
especially on the creation of the cattle “estâncias”, linked to the economy of the Center-
South of Brazil that changed the economic and social landscape of the new province
and contributed decisively to economic cycles and changes in the proper Brazil-Colony.