Nobrezas na América portuguesa

notas sobre as estratégias de enobrecimento na capitania de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The debate over the chances of ennoblement opened to the inhabitants of Portuguese America in the eighteenth century will be the starting point for a revaluation of the concepts about the Luzo-American elites employed by the historiography. The analysis of the nobilities in the captaincy of Minas Gerais centred in the knights of the military orders living in that territory constitutes the empirical base to grasp their heterogeneity and the preeminent status acquired by those who had their local notoriety sanctioned by a superior distinction given by the Portuguese monarchy.