Local Specificities in the Sesmaria (Land Grant) System in Colonial Brazil: Race, Gender, Family, and Property in the 18th Century

The sesmarias system was the way the Portuguese Crown used to grant land as a reward for conquest or services provided. The system granted a conditional property since the person who received it was obliged to cultivate their possession within a certain period, under penalty of having their grant revoked by the king. Although the sesmaria system was reasonably homogeneous in Portuguese America, comparative research among the colony’s captaincies makes it possible to scrutinize specific characteristics. The sesmeiro (grant recipient) very rarely was identified by color. But in the case of the captaincy of Mato Grosso, four cases of sesmeiros, identified as black free people, allow for a discussion concerning race and access to property. In the case of the captaincies of Ceará and Maranhão, it was possible to identify numerous women, widows, and single women petitioning for sesmarias as a way of guaranteeing assets, and thus also enabling a gender analysis of access to landed property. In the captaincy of Minas Gerais, a mining area, in addition to the size of the sesmarias being smaller than in agricultural or pastoral regions, a distinguishing characteristic was that many sesmeiros justified their requests for sesmarias by emphasizing they had a family, showing how having land was essential for family sustenance. Finally, we analyze the case of the captaincy of Piauí, which registered many sesmarias that involved more than one plot—that is, a sesmaria document mentioned several cattle ranches in the same record, revising our understanding of land grants as single tracts. In sum, we intend to present a multiplicity of ways the sesmaria system was used locally through decisions by local authorities and strategies of candidates for sesmarias, inaugurating new practices and norms in the colonial land tenure regime.