Combater as secas e defender as florestas a natureza nos desafios da ciência e da técnica para modernizar o Brasil (1889 a 1934)

In the first decades of 20th century the just instituted Brazilian Republic faced the challenge to modernize the country. Considering that the progress was associated with the exhaustion of the forest reserves and with climatic changes, two big issues were seen as fundamental: To Fight the Droughts and To Defend the Forests; headed by professionals who were dedicated to these ideals. This research starts from the premise that these were the main challenges enforced by nature to the Brazilian development; the general objective was delimited in the search to understand the meaning and the conception of the natural world by this group of professionals who faced the shock between modernizing the country and conserving its natural resources. Aiming to contribute with the construction of the Brazilian environmental history and to bring historical elements to the debate about the environment in the country, the author concentrates his attention to the analyses, the discussions and the actions that preceded the regulation on the use of natural resources and the implementation of the environmental legislation in Brazil, occurred in 1934. The investigation uses as methodological basis the theoretical directions of environmental history, using sources of data still little explored and valued. In such way, it is taken as starting point some published papers about this subject during the period between 1889 and 1934 in two technical magazines the Revista Brazil Ferro-Carril and the Revista do Club de Engenharia. National engineering played a basic role in this process while arguing, projecting and constructing the development. The formulated proposals, after being divulged, had fomented the interchange with other professionals and had favored the advance of ambient questions in Brazil, in the sense to preserve natural resources, to construct more harmonic relations between the society and the nature and to equate the development with the environment preservation

Ribeira, técnica versus natureza: transformações em prol de um projeto de modernização (1860-1932)

The necessity of the insertion of the capital of Rio Grande do Norte in the world-wide commercial scene and its claim as the seat of political power, in ends of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century, determined the direction of urban interventions undertaken by government to restructure the city. In that matter, there were several actions of improvements and embellishment in Natal, which had, as a starting point, the adequacy works of the port, located in the Ribeira quarter, with the aim of ending the physical isolation that reinforced its economic stagnation. Besides the problems faced in the opening bar of the Potengi River, and would complement the required improvements, other barriers demonstrate the tension established between the physic-geographic field and the man: the flooded and slope which connected Cidade Alta and Ribeira the first two quarters of the city.The execution of these works demanded knowledge whose domain and application it was for engineering. But, how the actions done for the engineers, in sense to transform natural areas into constructed spaces made possible the intentional conformation of the quarter of the Ribeira in a commercial and politician-administrative center, in the middle of the XIX century and beginning of the XX? Understand, therefore, the employment effects of technology on the physical-geographical Ribeira, is the objective of this work that uses theoretical and methodological procedures of Urban Environmental History, by analyzing the relationship between the environment and the man, mediated by knowledge and use of technologies. The documental research was used, as primary sources, the Messages of the Provincial Assembly Government that later became the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Norte reports and articles on specialized publications, in addition to local newspapers. The work is structured in five chapters. First, some comments about Urban Environmental History (Chapter 1) supplemented with analysis of the conceptual construction of nature in the Contemporary Era and its application in the city (chapter 02), the following chapters (03 and 04) deal with the rise of engineers as a active group in the Brazilian government frameworks and their vision about the nature inside the urban environment and it is studied how the professional technicians dealt with the improvement work of the harbor and in the shock with the natural forces. Other works that would complement this "project" of modernization and had had natural obstacles to be removed the Ribeira flood and slope constitute the subject of the fifth chapter. Finally, some final considerations retake the initial discussions aiming an association between the technique and the nature as junction elements inside the process of constitution of a Modern Natal

Henrique Novaes: técnica, território e cidade em uma trajetória profissional: Brasil, primeira metade do século XX

The career of civil engineer Henrique de Novaes, a remarkable figure in the academic, technical and political fields, demonstrates its extensive and relevant work across Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century. It covered from the design of water supply and sewage works, road and rail transport networks, works against drought in the Northeast, hydroelectric and harbor facilities to the urbanization planning and architectural projects, which displays a systematic and multiple production. City and territory conformed to his fields of verification, practical and above all, transformation. The search for understanding of the inclusion of a social actor in this process thus contributes to the specific analysis of the doings of Henrique de Novaes, who graduated at Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro in 1906. From a polymorphic activity in different scales, one tries to figure how, through academic education or professional practice, urban history in Brazil can be told or built. The introduction of technological innovations matched the purposes of planning and urban sprawl, as well as met the specifications of regulation and institutionalization of public infrastructure services at the time. The overall plans proposed by the engineer thought of the city as a whole, interconnected to the structural networks. At the same time, the knowledge of a larger physical scale the territory bounces back in the urban in a relationship of reciprocity and completeness. The objective research, therefore, tries to understand the roles played by Henrique de Novaes s works and academic education in the accomplishment of systematic modernization of Brazilian urban space and territory, recovering a little known historical figure by current historiography. It is proposed, as methodological axis, that the study of this professional career configures itself as an essential element for understanding the idea of progress embodied in the technical studies and proposals for improvements and sanitation nationwide in the first half of the twentieth century . The primary sources for the construction of this analysis were technical articles in journals of the period ( Clube de Engenharia , Viação e Revista Brasileira de Engenharia ), and technical reports, government messages, newspaper articles published at the time, autobiographical reports and the engineer s verbal communications with relatives. The work is structured in three chapters: "Biographical traces, academic education and 'technical and political' activities" illustrates the initiation into the technical, public and political environment; Chapter 2, "Technique and territory" outlines his network understanding through sanitation and transport services; Chapter 3 "Technique and City" describes the influence of polytechnics knowledge on the propositions of modernization of cities; Finally, "Final Thoughts: An Evaluation," presents an overview of the affiliations and practice of an engineer in the different scales, and its contribution to the modernization of Brazilian urban and territorial space