How Sertões Became Borderlands: The Making of Territorial Frontiers in the Brazilian Interior, 1690s–1760s

Sertões – frontiers – borderlands – much historiographical attention has been paid to these distinct yet overlapping concepts. To elucidate how these cultural and territorial signifiers apply within a Brazilian context, this paper will examine the development of territorial boundaries between the captaincies of Minas Gerais and Bahia during the first half of the 18^th century. How, why, and by whom were territorial and institutional claims developed and sustained over undifferentiated interior spaces? Why did such disputes matter within an overarching Portuguese Imperial framework? How did sertões become non-sertões—territories more fully integrated into the bureaucratic networks of the Antigo Regime nos Trópicos (Old Regime of the Tropics). To answer these questions, I analyze qualitatively and quantitatively letters of patent (cartas patentes) issued by the captaincies of Minas Gerais and Bahia. These letters conferred paramilitary privileges and, in some cases, broad administrative powers. As mining communities developed in the interior, these letters were used by recipients and higher-level authorities alike as evidence to buttress territorial and bureaucratic claims long before the founding of incorporated towns. In this presentation, I will suggest that letters of patent have been underutilized as historical sources in the study of Brazilian settler-colonialist expansion. Letters preserved in state-level archives in Bahia and Minas Gerais significantly outnumber those preserved in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (Overseas Historical Archive of Portugal). The discrepancy reflects the fact that the Lisbon authorities only registered letters sanctioned by the King. However, I will demonstrate that provisional letters of patent issued by captaincy governors brought status and privileges to their recipients, even if they never obtained full royal approval. This presentation will illustrate the utility of letters of patent to reconstruct more fully networks of power, authority, and identity that preceded the development of formal institutions in the Brazilian interior.