A história na mesa: o olhar de cronistas e viajantes sobre os hábitos alimentares na América Portuguesa - século XVI.

Abstract

The history of food is an increasingly present theme in the debates and perspectives of the Brazilian historiographical field. In this context, the present research proposes an analysis of dietary habits in Portuguese America, revealed in the cultural practices and interethnic relations, recorded by the chroniclers and European travelers of the first century of effective Portuguese colonization in the American tropics, such as the informative writings of Pero Vaz de Caminha, Pero Magalhães Gândavo, as well as the observations of the engineer master Gabriel Soares de Sousa, which together with Jesuit letters, such as Manuel da Nóbrega and José de Anchieta, form what we can call an "informative literature" about the first decades of Lusitanian colonization in the New World. We investigated the circulation of plants, fruits, fruits and vegetables carried from one part of the vast Portuguese Overseas Empire to the other, which started, as it were, from the maritime enterprises at the dawn of the European Modern Age. As well as the mestizos that were given in the food practices of the Portuguese-Brazilian settlers from the sixteenth century onwards, which became, from then on, the genesis of what we might call a "Brazilian cuisine." Therefore, when revisiting food practices in the daily life of Portuguese America, we will launch a theoretical-methodological discussion that goes through the field of Cultural History, establishing a dialogue with History and Anthropology, highlighting, therefore, concepts inherent to these theoretical fields, such as relations interethnic, everyday, cultural practices, mestizos and identities.