Right to land in Brazil The gestation of the conflict 1795-1824 (original) (raw)

The objective was therefore to understand how the sesmaria system was inserted in the Crown’s attempt to regulate its relationship with the colony, while it – the sesmaria – was understood in Portugal as an important instrument for the appropriation of the land which led to various conceptions and conclusions concerning it. Throughout those years, the problems experienced in the metropolis that culminated with the transfer of the Court and, in 1822, with the independence of Brazil, produced numerous studies on the desired relationship between Portugal and Brazil that, despite different views, provoked reflections on the right to land, both in Portugal and in its then main colony. To answer some of the questions raised by the sources, I went in search of an point with which to guide myself in the study of eighteenth century agrarian legislation. I ventured once more into the complex field of the Law and within the conceptions of justice which enshrine a particular vision of the history of the occupation of place. Influenced by Thompson, I tried to denaturalise private property, including the system of sesmarias and its most important basis, that of the requirement to cultivate it. The text which I now offer the reader is the result of this trajectory. In the first part, I discuss the concepts of land rights present in the reflections of the memoirists and jurists of the late eighteenth century in Portugal to understand how the sesmarias showed a particular reading of landed property. To do this, I analyse in particular the reflections of Domingos Vandelli and those of Pascoal José de Mello e Freire, the greatest interpreter of the Pombaline spirit. In the second part, I describe the alvará of 1795, which sought to order the sesmaria concessions in Brazil. In reconstructing its many provisions, I show how land conflicts were a concern of the Crown and how the charter was an attempt to scrutinise the process of granting lands in the main Portuguese colony. Then I use the conclusions of Francisco Maurício de Souza Coutinho, brother of Dom Rodrigo and governor of Pará, to lay bare the limits of the action proposed by the alvará, which was suspended in the following year due to the intense land conflicts. In the third part, I consider legislation relating to the system of sesmarias to understand the historicity, not only of its efforts, but also the constraints and limits of the Crown in matters involving quarrels over land. I reconstruct the sesmaria concessions from the Mariano period to highlight the regional differences and dynamics of occupation. Also in this part I analyse the reasons why sesmeiros and potential sesmeiros sought to meet the requirements of the administration, at the same time as using the law for their interests. Additionally, I reconstitute the intervention of the Crown in two emblematic situations: that involving Ignácio Correia Pamplona, in Minas Gerais, and the disputes over land involving Garcia Paes Leme, in the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro. In the last part of this text, I reconsider the arguments concerning sesmarias in the 1820s, both in Portugal and in Brazil, to demonstrate the process of the delegitimisation of the system as the basis of land ownership. To do so, I highlight the thoughts of Francisco Manoel Trigoso Aragão Morato, during the period of the convocation of the Cortes, and the proposals put forward by the Bahian deputy Domingos Borges de Carvalho. I also follow the interventions of the Court once installed in Brazil, from 1808 onwards, and the expectations raised by the country’s independence. In this sense, I analyse the criticisms made by the Portuguese António José Gonçalves Chaves concerning the sesmaria system and the distribution of land in the country. Finally, I consider the “discourses” of the constituents in 1823 and the consecration in 1824 of the ownership of land in all its fullness.