The Geography of Power in South America: Divergent Patterns of Domination in Spanish and Porteguese Colonies

The authors of this paper explore the geography of power in South America as expressed by Spain and Portugal in their different patterns of development in colonial America. The paper outlines the political position of each country during the Age of Discovery, the political attitudes of each and the resultant urban morphologies and spatial organizations developed by each colonial power. A close examination of two South American colonial cities one Spanish, one Portuguese-reveals that the Spanish urban pattern promoted a hierarchy of interconnected cities of gridded layout, with key state and religious functions strategically located in relationship to the plaza. Portugal, in contrast, created a series of isolated commercial-military towns, of informal morphology with key state and religious functions distributed according to topography. Two case studies of Spanish and Portuguese colonial cities clearly illustrate the divergent policies and patterns of spatial control of these two important colonizing powers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.1995.21

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