40 BRAZIL Marilia Coutinho and Simon Schwartzman Brazil is a newcomer in modern scientific and technological activities. Its contemporary scientific and technological institutions were mainly estab- lished after the higher education reform of 1968. 1 Between 1500 and 1808 Brazil was a colony in the Portuguese Empire, which did not allow the establishment of universities or research institutions in its possessions, as the Spanish had in other parts of America. Still, the region was the subject of interest and curiosity by European travelers and naturalists, who produced detailed descriptions and pictorial representations of its fauna, flora, inhab- itants, and landscape. 2 COLONIAL AND IMPERIAL SCIENCE In 1808 the Portuguese royal court moved to Rio de Janeiro, fleeing the invasion of Napoleon’s troops in Europe, and established the first higher education and research institutions in the old colony – a military and engineering school, two schools of medicine, two schools of law, a botanical garden, an astronomical observatory, a museum of natural history, and 1 This chapter is based on Simon Schwartzman, “Struggling to Be Born: The Scientific Community in Brazil,” Minerva, 16 (1978), 545–80. 2 Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, José Paulo Monteiro Soares, and Cristina Ferrão, Viagem Ao Brasil de Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira: A Expedição Philosophica Pelas Capitanias Do Pará, Rio Negro, Mato Grosso e Cuyabá, 3 vols. (Petrópolis: Kapa Editorial, 2006); William Joel Simon, Scientific Expeditions in the Portuguese Overseas Territories, 1783–1808, and the Role of Lisbon in the Intellectual-Scientific Community of the Late Eighteenth Century (Lisbon: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, 1983); André Thevet, Les Singvlaritez de La France Antarctiqve, Avtrement Nommée Amerique: & de Plusieurs Terres & Isles Decouuertes de Nostre Temps (Paris: Chez les heritiers de Maurice de la Porte, 1557); Gabriel Soares Sousa, Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, and Visconde Porto Seguro, Tratado Descritivo do Brasil em 1587 (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1971); Willem Piso and Georg Marcgrave, Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (Amsterdam: Joannes de Laet, 1648); Roderick J. Barman, “The Forgotten Journey: Georg Heinrich Langsdorff and the Russian Imperial Scientific Expedition to Brazil, 1821–1829,” Terrae Incognitae, 3 (1971), 67–96. 799 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139044301.041 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carleton University Library, on 28 Mar 2020 at 15:29:42, subject to the Cambridge Core