Managing conflicts: the exercise of power and the mercantile interests in the captaincy/province of São Paulo (1765-1822)

Author(s)

Ana Paula Medicci

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2010-10-18

Examining board members

Cecilia Helena Lorenzini de Salles Oliveira; Leila Mezan Algranti; Maria Fernanda Baptista Bicalho; Vera Lucia Amaral Ferlini; Laura de Mello e Souza

• Advisor: Cecilia Helena Lorenzini de Salles Oliveira

Abstract

The thesis analyses the conflicts inherent to the exercise of political power in the captaincy/province of São Paulo considering the study of its politic-administrative structure and relating it to the socio-economic transformations and to the way that the members of local power groups tried to influence the governance between 1765, when the captaincy was reorganized as an autonomic administrative unit, and 1822, after the Provisory Government was instituted and recognized by the Constitutional Courts of the Portuguese Nation and by the regent prince D. Pedro. The analysis of the conjoining movement between public and private interests in São Paulo at that period is based on sources related to the system in which they bid for royal income, receiving the right to collect the taxes, and its relation to the high-ranking military positions concessions, demonstrating the impossibility to separate the political-administrative relations established between the appointed governors of São Paulo and the interests of the groups related to the local production and commerce. On the other hand, the full integration of this captaincy to the developmental politics of the Portuguese Empire implanted by the Crown is pointed out, what allows a better comprehension of the public space and the economic power reached by the paulistas during the first decades of the 19th century, when the installation of the Brazilian Empire occurred. (AU)