Vadios e política de povoamento na América portuguesa, na segunda metade do século XVIII

• Autores: Antonio Cesar de Almeida Santos
• Localización: Estudos Ibero-Americanos, ISSN-e 1980-864X, Vol. 27, Nº. 2, 2001, págs. 2-30
• Idioma: portugués
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • English

    The term "vagrants", sometimes accompanied of the epithet "wicked", frequented, with certain regularity, the correspondence exchanged among the metropolitan and colonial Portuguese authorities, in the second half of the 18th century. Vagrancy, considered contrary to the public well being, was a crime described in the "Ordenações do Reino". So, although the surveillance on that type of behaviour is not a noveity for the ir century, it is interesting to observe that, for that period, the combat of the vagrants, and of the wicked ones, that swarmed the roads of Portuguese America's hinterland, received a new treatment. In the reign of D. José I, his minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, taking into account Willian Petty's Political Arithmetic principies, declared that the largest wealth of a State was its population. That maxim sustained a settlement action that objectified, to integrate indigenous and dispersed inhabitants to the political body of the Portuguese kingdom, congregating fitem in institutionalised settlements. In that context, the population notion stands out, because it is tied up to a specific condition that is being attributed to the individuais: to be an useful member of the civil society.

  • português

    Embora o combate à vadiagem, comportamento considerado contrário ao bem público, não se constitua urna novidade para o Estado português do século XVIII, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, ministro de D. José I, sustentou uma política colonial de povoamento que objetivou integrar indígenas, moradores dispersos e "vadios" ao corpo político do reino, congregando-os em povoações institucionalizadas. Essa ação esteve apoiada nos princípios da Aritmética Política, para a qual a maior riqueza de um Estado era a sua população.