Keynote Lecture II

The occupation of a territory that today spans 8,500,000 km² was a slow and arduous process, made possible in large part by the knowledge of Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans, both of whom were accustomed to life in predominantly tropical and subtropical regions.

An examination of daily life in the interior of this territory between the 16th and 18th centuries reveals how what I define as ‘provisional forms of existence’ were improvised and developed, blending knowledge from diverse cultural traditions: those of the Indigenous populations, Africans and their Afro-descendant heirs—whether enslaved or freedmen—and Portuguese colonisers. This study thus explores the forms and meanings of their everyday acts of incorporation and re-creation, which conferred specificity upon the society that emerged from the violent and dramatic encounter of these distinct cultures and ultimately contributed to shaping present-day Brazil.

Laura de Mello e Souza was born in São Paulo, where she spent most of her life. She earned her degree in History from the University of São Paulo (USP) in 1975. She completed her Master’s (1977–1980) and PhD (1982–1986) at the same university, under the supervision of Fernando A. Novais. She joined the Department of History at USP as a professor of Modern History in 1983 and retired in 2014, when she assumed the Chair of Brazilian History at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, concluding her teaching career in 2022. She currently continues to supervise some doctoral students in France (Sorbonne and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales/EHESS) and in Brazil (USP) and remains active in research and writing after 42 years of university teaching. She has three daughters and three granddaughters.