Introduction

The history of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil and its influence on contemporary Brazil is a story of multiple legacies. In this chapter I explore these through a study of the initial Portuguese policy of settlement of the Brazilian colony.

Eager to defend its colonial lands in Brazil from foreign powers, between 1534 and 1536 the Portuguese Crown divided the land of the colony in longitudinal tracks, or slices, going from the coast to the imaginary line set by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Brazil was thus subdivided into 15 units that became known as capitanias hereditarias – hereditary captaincies. The system of hereditary captaincies would formally last only a little more than a decade, being abolished in 1549. Nevertheless, its impact on social, economic and political affairs in Brazil has been important. Each of these captaincies was given to donatários – members of the Portuguese lower nobility or bureaucrats close to João III – whose duty it became to administer the land, colonize it and protect it against foreign invasions (see Burns 1970; Skidmore 2010: 9–18). The donatários were in turn given the right to exploit most of the natural resources of their captaincy.

While this mode of imperial expansion and consolidation was officially abandoned in 1549, it continued in practice, albeit in more of a hybrid form, until 1753 when the last captaincies were subsumed into the public administration of the crown.