This article intends to describe the trajectory of a young Portuguese officer, José Joaquim de Lima e Silva, in order to reconstitute, through his institutional experience, the social strategies that he applied to concretely negotiate his practice as a military of the Portuguese Empire. The Army was not an institution endowed with a high level of rationalization in the XVIII century. In its staff there were officers who built their careers by different means. This plurality of manners of being a military was partially due to the monopoly exerted by the Crown on the distribution of military ranks. These ranks were viewed as one of the several symbolic goods given by the monarch as a reward for services rendered by his subjects. Thus, the hierarchy of the Army becomes permeable to the social hierarchy.
Trajectory; Institutional Experience; Ancient Regime Military Culture