Captaincy System

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Captaincy System

The captaincy system in Brazil had its roots in the late medieval Portuguese royal grant of senhório (seignory), which, in turn, had been slightly modified as the Portuguese began to settle the uninhabited Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeiras, and Cape Verdes in the fifteenth century. In those cases certain individuals had been given the jurisdiction, rights, and revenues that had pertained to the king and were called donatários (donataries), because they had been given a doação (gift) by the crown—often as rewards for services. The carta de doação was accompanied by a foral, which in careful detail explained the rights and duties of the colonists in relation to both the donatário and the crown. The grants were perpetual and hereditary, but if the line died out, the grant reverted to the crown.

In response to increasing French threats to Brazil and to better settle the region, King João III (r. 1521–1557) instituted the captaincy system, which had worked well in the Atlantic Islands. Between 1534 and 1536 fifteen grants, each extending along the coast from ten to a hundred leagues (with three-fifths of them stretching fifty leagues or more), were made to twelve lord-proprietors or captains. Beginning with the Amazon River and extending southward to the present-day state of Santa Catarina, they were Pará (João de Barros and Aires da Cunha); Maranhão (Fernão Álvares de Andrade); Piaui and Ceará (António Cardoso de Barros); Rio Grande (João de Barros and Aires da Cunha); Itamaracá (Pero Lopes de Sousa); Pernambuco (Duarte Coelho Pereira); Bahia (Francisco Pereira Coutinho); Ilheus (Jorge Figueiredo Correia); Porto Seguro (Pero do Campo Tourinho); Espírito Santo (Vasco Fernandes Coutinho); São Tomé (Pero de Gois); Rio de Janeiro (Martim Afonso de Sousa); Santo Amaro (Pero Lopes de Sousa); São Vicente (Martim Afonso de Sousa); and Santa Ana (Pero Lopes de Sousa). Each donatário was granted extensive administrative, fiscal, and judicial powers by the Crown in exchange for settling and defending at their own cost the lands granted to them. They could make land grants (sesmarias) and found towns.

Only ten of the above-mentioned captaincies were settled in the sixteenth century. Two were left abandoned by their donatários, and several exchanged hands. Porto Seguro was sold to the first Duke of Aveiro and Ilheus to the wealthy merchant Lucas Giraldes. In addition, two small hereditary captaincies were established: Ilha de Itaparica (1556) in the Bay of All Saints and Paraguasu (1566) in the Recôncavo of Bahia. By the end of the sixteenth century, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro had become royal colonies. However, in the seventeenth century the Crown created a new set of hereditary captaincies in both the State of Brazil and in the State of Maranhão, the latter having been separated from the State of Brazil in 1621. Though five new proprietary captaincies were established in the State of Brazil, only two survived to be of some importance: Campos de Goitacases, given to Salvador Correia de Sá and his descendants, and Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Itanhaém. During the reign of João V (r. 1706–1750), five proprietary colonies in the State of Brazil were incorporated by the Crown. By 1759 the remaining ones were also absorbed. In the 1630s the captaincies of Cumá, Caete, Cametá, and Cabo do Norte were created in the State of Maranhão. In 1665 Ilha Grande de Joanes (the island of Marajó) was made a hereditary captaincy. In 1685 Xingu was created but never settled. But between 1752 and 1754 the six above-mentioned captaincies were incorporated into the State of Grão Pará and Maranhão.

Efforts by earlier writers on the subject to characterize the captaincies as either feudal or capitalistic have added little to the understanding of this important institution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dutra. Francis A. "Duarte Coelho Pereira, First Lord-Proprietor of Pernambuco: The Beginning of a Dynasty." The Americas 29, no. 4 (1973): 415-441.

Johnson, H. B., Jr. "The Donatary Captaincy in Perspective: Portuguese Backgrounds to the Settlement of Brazil," Hispanic American Historical Review 52, no. 2 (1972): 203-214.

Saldanha, António Vasconcelos de. As Capitanias do Brasil: Antecedentes, Desenvolvimento e Extinção de um Fenómeno Atlântico. Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 2001.

Vianna, Hélio. História do Brasil: Periodo Colonial, 2nd rev. edition. São Paulo: Edições Melhoramentos, 1963.

Francis A. Dutra

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture