ABSTRACT
The paper discusses the careers in the Royal Service of six captain-generals, who governed the State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará in the first half of the eighteenth century. It characterizes individual profiles, and the criteria to select agents (based on their experiences in Europe and in the Portuguese Atlantic), offering an overview of the exercise of governance. The paper also examines the dynamics in the administrative jurisdiction of the State of Maranhão and Grão Pará, emphasizing the frequent trips of governors and captain-generals from São Luís, government headquarters, to Belém. Recorded since the second half of the seventeenth century, this peculiarity of the political and administrative structure of the State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará was warranted by the need to conquest and colonize the North, and came to an end in 1751, when the state capital was definitely moved to Belém.
Keywords:
captain-generals; Pará; trajectories; administrative dynamics; State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará.