A Companhia Geral de Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão e os homens de negócio de Vila Bela (1752-1778)

Abstract

In this dissertation we intended to analyze the relationships of a group of traders living in Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade, which maintained trade relations with the Companhia Geral de Comércio do Grão-Pará (General Company for Trade of the Grão-Pará and Maranhão), showing their mode of action and their networks of performances. Thus, we also seek to understand the economic and political practices of traders in the eighteenth century, in Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade - Captaincy of Mato Grosso, between the years 1752 and 1778, and so we try to draw some personal trajectories, but only for their public lives. To address these market relations in the Captaincy of Mato Grosso we articulate them to seek a larger framework in which the geopolitical issues concerning the definition of the boundaries between Portuguese and Spanish in America during the second part of the eighteenth century, influenced the actions of the Metropolis (with regard to trade, agriculture and the stand) on realization of possession of captaincy. The sources which were used for this study appear in manuscripts and printed documents belonging to the Arquivo Público de Mato Grosso (APMT), the Núcleo de Documentação e Informação Histórica Regional (NDIHR), and the Casa Barão de Melgaço (CBM). We count also with a wide range of sources and published literature on the subject. In our analysis we show that the main men of business from Vila Bela, but were linked to the interests of the Company for Trade is also engaged in other activities, such as agriculture and mining, and take political and administrative positions in the House of Vila Bela, the we understand also demanded the way in which articulated the interests of individual metros.