A QUALIDADE DA TERRA E DOS HOMENS: COLONIZAÇÃO E POSSE DE TERRAS NA AMÉRICA PORTUGUESA (SERGIPE – SÉCULO XVI-XVII)

Abstract

The present article aimed to analyze the assembly of lusitanian colonial exploration structures in a space and specific time perspective: the Sergipe captaincy; through a characterization of settlement and distribution process of land ownership in America. Therefore, the paper briefly presents the dynamics of conquest and occupation of the territory and also pointing out the relevance of cultural and political elements in the process of land distribution and in the formation of large slave properties in colonial northeastern. The analysis of letters about land grants donation, produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and from printed sources of the same period, indicates that the territory occupation and land distribution allowed the formation of a productive scenario that consisted in various forms of ownership, combining the existence of large estates with less extensive ones. It stood out the importance of the aristocratic values and clientelism to the process of the large areas monopoly formation, a process that transformed the land possession in a reproduction instrument of an exclusionary social hierarchy, with profound effects on the composition of the agrarian question.