This article corresponds to a collection of fragments of the texts I have been writing with Maria de Fátima Silva Gouvêa since 2006. It contains, for the most part, some pieces of the research projects submitted to various Brazilian research promotion agencies, or publications still in the press. Anyway, they are unpublished texts in which we have developed the self-government notion that is part of the corporate concept of society, as a theoretical tool for understanding the social organization in the Portuguese colonial America; or else the concept of government networks during the overseas empire, an analysis tool dear to Fátima Gouvêa; and it is concluded with the notion of multicontinental monarchy originally formulated by Nuno Gonçalo Monteiro.
Portuguese Monarchy in the Modern Era; Overseas Empire; Colonial Elite