A metropolitan law frees enslaved people arriving in Portugal

On 8 May 1758, an alvará extended the 1755 laws on Indigenous freedom from Grão-Pará and Maranhão to the wider State of Brazil. The legal extension stated that Indigenous people were free subjects...

On 17 August 1758, the Crown extended the Diretório to Indigenous settlements throughout Brazil. The policy joined imperial occupation to cultural assimilation and labor administration. Its...

On 3 October 1758, a royal alvará ordered that jailers in Brazil provide sustenance to enslaved people held in prison and not use their labor for private service. The order acknowledged a specific...

On 13 August 1759, an alvará confirmed the Companhia Geral de Pernambuco e Paraíba. The company received a 20-year monopoly over commerce in Pernambuco and associated captaincies. In a region where...

On 3 September 1759, the Portuguese Crown promulgated a law proscribing and expelling the Society of Jesus from Portugal and its overseas domains. In Brazil, Jesuits had held extensive mission estates...

The royal alvará of 5 January 1785 ordered most factories and manufactures in Brazil closed, protecting metropolitan commercial interests. Coarse cotton production for enslaved people’s clothing was...

On 21 April 1792, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, was hanged in Rio de Janeiro for his role in the 1789 Minas conspiracy. He was the only one of the principal accused whose death...

On 12 May 1798, a royal charter abolished the Diretório in the captaincy of Pará and set out new rules for Indigenous people in colonial towns and settlements. It criticized abuses by directors and...

On 12 August 1798, Salvador awoke to handwritten notices calling for a republic, political equality, and an end to slavery. The movement, known as the Conjuração Baiana, Revolta dos Alfaiates, or...

On 20 August 1798, two letters signed by “anonymous republicans” were found at Salvador’s Carmo religious complex. They urged a revolution and invoked equality, liberty, and popular fraternity....