Pioneers and farmers from São Paulo: the environmental history and Pierre Monbeig’s work

Abstract

The French geographer Pierre Monbeig arrived in Brazil with other researchers in the early nineteen-thirties to join one of the first groups of professors at the University of São Paulo (USP). This paper presents a reflection upon his work, “Pioneers and Farmers from São Paulo” (1984b) (“Pioneiros e fazendeiros de São Paulo”), from the perspective of environmental history. The objective is to understand the importance of Monbeig’s research to studies that focus on the relationship between humans and the environment within a scenario of economic expansion in São Paulo in the first decades of the twentieth century. Even after returning to France in the mid-forties, Pierre Monbeig maintained contact with his students and advisees in Brazil, producing fundamental work about the country that never left his intellectual horizon.

Keywords Pierre Monbeig; Environmental history; Historical sources