Brazil and French Guiana: The four-hundred year struggle for Amapá
Williams, Donn Alan
Williams, Donn Alan
Citations
Altmetric:
Soloist
Composer
Publisher
Date
1975
Additional date(s)
Abstract
The question of Amapa, a 101,000 square mile parcel of land in the Amazon Basin, has been at one time or another the focal point of British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Brazilian foreign policies. From its founding in 1500 by Vicente Yanez Pinzon, each of these nations has laid claim to and attempted to settle the region. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed British, French, and Dutch efforts to establish themselves in this hazy middle ground between Spanish and Portuguese Americas. Each was successful at founding and retaining a small colony on the north coast of South America, but only the French exhibited greater pretentions. Their establishment of Guiana became a staging ground for military and scientific expeditions into the adjacent, unsettled territory of Amapa. The Portuguese, for their part, subscribed to the same pretentions and set up their base of operations at Belem. As they moved west into Amapa, they encountered the French who had pushed east from Guiana. In June of 1688 the first meeting of French and Portuguese military units opened the long struggle for this vast Amazon region. The centuries that followed until the solution of the Amapa question in 1900 witnessed the ascendancy and the fall of the respective fortunes of the two contestants. For the most part, however, the area remained a no man's land, while its fate was decided at the conference tables of Europe. The vagueness of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Franco-Portuguese treaty terms kept the issue alive. Marshal Junot's invasion of Portugal and the transmigration of the Portuguese Court in 1807, however, led to the Lusitanian occupation of not only Amapa, but French Guiana as well. Though Guiana was returned through the treaties that followed the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire, the issue remained open as its boundary was not clearly delineated. Upon gaining its independence in 1821, Brazil inherited the question and attempted to deal with it as best a struggling, new nation could. Amapa was officially neutralized in 1841, while in the following decade the diplomatic mission of the Visconde do Uruguai led to the signing of the Treaty of Arbitration in 1897, the embassy of the Barao do Rio Branco, and the final award of the region to Brazil in 1900.
Contents
Subject
Subject(s)
Brazil--Boundaries--French Guiana
French Guiana--Boundaries--Brazil
Amapá (Brazil : Territory)--History
French Guiana--Boundaries--Brazil
Amapá (Brazil : Territory)--History
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Genre
Dissertation
Description
Format
vii, 223 leaves, bound : map
Department
History