Uma releitura do “Brasil colonial” a partir da obra de António Manuel Hespanha

Abstract

O intuito do presente artigo é ressaltar o mérito e a abrangência da influência da obra de António Manuel Hespanha no sentido da ruptura de uma abordagem clássica da historiografia brasileira sobre o período colonial, ou seja, do estabelecimento de um novo paradigma historiográfico por meio da operacionalização de novas categorias e conceitos. Na segunda parte, iniciamos com um rápido balanço da atual discussão historiográfica sobre Estados e monarquias na Europa moderna. Com isso, pretendemos contribuir para a discussão da historiografia sobre a sociedade dos trópicos entendida como parte da monarquia pluricontinental portuguesa.

Towards a constitutional sociology of property rights:

“…Although the structures of the Ancien Régime had to be rebuilt under different conditions and circumstances in the Latin American context, their basic features were rather preserved at least until the second half of the 18 th century. Accordingly, as well as in the Peninsula, in the Portuguese colonies in the America the forms of social inclusion and exclusion were based on personal networks of social identification of individuals within families and communities, according to a highly fragmented order based on different levels of privileges and status (FRAGOSO; GOUVEA; BICALHO, 2000). Moreover, the typical legal structures of the Portuguese Ancien Régimethe so-called corporatist monarchywere also upheld, as well as the political economy of privileges, based on the concession of mercies and state offices by the crown (HESPANHA, 2015) to those who benefited the interests of the King in the colonies (the common good).…”

“…That is, differently to what happened in the Europe (in the Peninsula and in Central and Northern Europe), where a land gentry had privileged access to land in the form of alodial property, often in opposition to the interests of the crown, in Brazil, from its beginning, the access to land had been a fairly porous and chaotic way to men of different origins acquiring power and status, even ascending in the local social hierarchies of the Ancién Régime (FRAGOSO, 2024). As we see in different cases which are largely supported by different sources, men with adventurous character could often accumulate wealth (ALVEAL, 2012), which could be then translated in land tenure through the mercy of the King or his representatives in the colony (FRAGOSO; GOUVEA; BICALHO, 2000). Moreover, many of the largest landowners had only precarious titles of property, especially after the independence, when sesmarias stopped being granted and possession became the only way of new land ownership (SILVA, 2008).…”