The Crown Divides Brazil Into Captaincies
Fifteen feudal grants hand the coast to noblemen expected to colonize at their own expense
Quick facts
- Number of grants
- 15 hereditary captaincies
- Obligation
- Colonize at the donee's own expense
- First capital
- Salvador, Bay of All Saints, founded 1549
- Outcome
- Most captaincies failed; Crown took direct control
What happened
To settle a coast it could not afford to garrison directly, the Portuguese Crown carved Brazil into feudal grants called captaincies. World History Encyclopedia records 15 such grants, obliging the nobles who received them, or more accurately their vassals, to develop the land for agriculture. Under the system, as the Library of Congress country study puts it, each donee was responsible for colonizing his own captaincy at his own expense. Most captaincies failed. The Crown then shifted toward direct royal administration, sending Tome de Sousa to found a capital city, Salvador, on the Bay of All Saints (Baia de Todos os Santos) in 1549.
Why it matters
The captaincy system was Portugal's low-cost gamble on colonization, and its failure pushed the Crown to build a centralized colonial government at Salvador that would run Brazil for over two centuries. The two captaincies that did succeed, both sugar-growing, pointed the way to the crop that would define colonial Brazil and its demand for enslaved labor.
How we know
The number of captaincies and the donatary obligations are documented in World History Encyclopedia and the Library of Congress country study, which also records the royal order to establish the capital at Salvador.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Portuguese Brazil · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Library of Congress, Country Studies (Federal Research Division). Brazil: The Colonial Era (Country Studies) · General sourcecountrystudies.us · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Brazil24 events · A land of hundreds of nations before 1500, the destination of nearly half of all enslaved Africans brought to the Americas, and the only monarchy the New World's republics ever toleratedView all →