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In 1935, the geographer Pierre Monbeig arrived in Brazil for study purposes. He was indeed undertaking a doctoral thesis on the Balearic Islands, but his discovery of Brazil and the specific issues of this new country were to challenge his conception of geography. This paper aims at analysing and interpreting the transformation of Monbeig’s reasoning and professional practices. In this vast and rapidly evolving country in which a large part of the territory remained undeveloped, Monbeig’s French education was to be stimulated by dynamic, open and land planning-oriented territorial conceptions.