Reformas militares e o reformismo ilustrado no Antigo Regime escravista: mobilidade social de oficiais pretos e pardos em Milícias e Ordenanças (Rio de Janeiro, 1762–1820)

Abstract

This thesis investigates the hypothesis that Portuguese military reforms initiated with the work of the Count of Lippe in Portugal in 1762—together with a broader context of administrative, pedagogical, and legal reforms already underway—helped disseminate directives that expanded the possibilities of social mobility for officers enrolled in Auxiliary and Ordinance Corps of Black and Pardo men in Portuguese America, insofar as they widened these subjects’ range of arguments and strategies for obtaining military commissions within a society structured by slavery. To examine this hypothesis, the study focuses on commissioned officers serving in Auxiliary and Ordinance Corps of manumitted Black men and freed Pardo men in Rio de Janeiro between 1762 and 1820.

The hypothesis is demonstrated through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of administrative and military sources held at the Overseas Historical Archive (Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Projeto Resgate), the National Archive of Rio de Janeiro, the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo, and the Military Historical Archive of Lisbon, as well as parish records from the Archive of the Metropolitan Curia of Rio de Janeiro and the FamilySearch website. On this basis, the thesis examines innovations and changes associated with military reforms and their application to the organization and appointment of commissioned posts in Auxiliary and Ordinance Corps of Black and Pardo men in Portuguese America—more specifically in Rio de Janeiro—while also identifying the social-mobility strategies pursued by individuals of enslaved ancestry both within the military sphere and through their clientelar networks.

These individuals, familiar with reformist military legislation shaped by Enlightenment ideas, appropriated such notions in resignified ways, thereby reproducing the hierarchical foundations of the Old Regime model while simultaneously reworking it through the cracks and openings of that society.