Local government in a captaincy without governor (São Paulo, 1748-1765)

Abstract

This research aims to investigate how São Paulo's municipal council operated between 1748 to 1765, the period in which the former Vincentian captaincy did not had a governor. At this time, São Paulo was under the rule of Rio de Janeiro's governor and the Santos' military governor. The governor's suppression and the chamber's maintenance were in a state of administrative overhaul at the center-south when the Goiás and Mato Grosso region were created from the territorial division of the São Paulo region. This highlights the political force of this institution within the imperial reforms. This project wants to understand the nature of this force and how the chamber worked and interacted in this long period in which the region had no autonomy. The research used a great deal of administrative documentation, as much municipal council as the governors and viceroys. The theoretical and methodological references of this study are supported in the political-social approach to training Brazil that recognizes the pluricontinental character of the Portuguese Empire in relative level of fairness between political institutions located in the Kingdom and in the fields, with the chamber, by their degree of rootedness and permanence, privileged locus of observation that dynamic. (AU)