Ordem e transgressão em Sergipe d El Rei: a trajetória do sargento-mor Bento José de Oliveira (1763-1808)

Abstract

This research aims, through the lives of Sergeant ordinances Bento José de Oliveira (1748-1808) and the crimes imputed to him, it understands the conflicts among the main administrative authorities of the captaincy of Sergipe d´El Rei, especially among captains -mores and ombudsmen, the subordination administrative period of Sergipe d´El Rei to the Bahia Captaincy General (1763-1808). Bento José de Oliveira was plantation owner of Cotinguiba and Staff Sergeant ordinances, known for numerous complaints for constituting the intercourse bandits which disturbed the authorities of Sergipe Capitany during the final three decades of the eighteenth century and the early years of the next century. The Prince Regent D. João ordered his arrest in the prison of Lisbon, where he died. The trajectory of Bento José de Oliveira serves us as a mean to move forward in the universe that has on the one hand the effort of the Portuguese Crown in the reigns of José I and Queen Mary I (including the regency of Prince João, future D. João VI) to rationalize the political and administrative centralization and, second, the centrifugal forces and a individuals autonomous and local groups who, through their particular interests, imprinted their actions to that social formation. We use the biography as a methodological tool. It is essential in this research to understand the relationship between the individual and the social, between a staff sergeant and his context, searching to see the biography character as being fragmented, multiple and marked by his own historicity and choices. This research falls under the strand of renewed political history, that is, seen outside the offices, the official programs of parties, elections and the |great men|, and aiming to find the meanings involving society and serve to legitimize the power and guide social relations. So one of the key concepts is the political culture of the Old Portuguese regime, based on an occupancy of positions and posts, through the provision of services to the Crown, responsible for granting privileges that allowed the significant chosen economic advantages and social prestige. The recurrence of delicts and disorder attributed to that individual highlights some aspects of the I weaknesses institutional and difficulty of establishing order in the Captaincy of Sergipe during the second half of the Eighteenth Century. This leads us to question the links of the vassals of Sergipe d´El Rei and its role in maintaining the institutional order.