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A 'captaincy' is a historical administrative division of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. Each was governed by a captain general.

Contents

In the Portuguese Empire

Captaincies of Brazil

In the Spanish Empire

Spanish Captaincies

See also

In the Portuguese Empire

In the Portuguese Empire, captaincies (''capitanias'', in Portuguese) were the administrative divisions and hereditary fiefs of the Portuguese state in some of its colonies.
Before the discovery of Brazil (1500), there were captaincies in the Portuguese Atlantic possessions of Madeira and the Azores Islands and in other island and settlements along the African coast.
The most important captaincies were, however, in the colony of Terra de Santa Cruz, or Land of the Holy Cross (modern Brazil). Each was delivered to a single captaincy general (''capitão-mor'', or ''capitão-donatário''), who was a Portuguese nobleman. They were straight stripes of variable height of land, divided parallel to the Equator from the coast to the Tordesilhas Line, created by King John III of Portugal in 1534.

Captaincies of Brazil

The captaincies in Brazil were initially fifteen in total, granted to twelve ''donatários''. They were the following:

Captaincy	''Donatário''
Captaincy of Maranhão	Fernão Aires and João de Barros
Captaincy of Ceará	Antônio Cardoso de Barros
Captaincy of Rio Grande	João de Barros / Aires da Cunha
Captaincy of Itamaracá	Pero Lopes de Sousa
Captaincy of Pernambuco	Duarte Coelho Pereira
Captaincy of Bahia	Francisco Pereira Coutinho
Captaincy of Ilhéus	Jorge de Figueiredo Correia
Captaincy of Porto Seguro	Pero Campos de Tourinho
Captaincy of Espírito Santo	Vasco Fernandes Coutinho
Captaincy of São Tomé	Pero de Góis da Silveira
Captaincy of São Vicente - 1st section (from Parati to Cabo Frio)	Martim Afonso de Sousa
Captaincy of Santo Amaro (from Bertioga to Parati)	Pero Lopes de Sousa
Captaincy of São Vicente - 2nd section (from Cananéia to Bertioga)	Martim Afonso de Sousa
Captaincy of Santana (from Cananéia to Laguna)	Pero Lopes de Sousa

All but two failed. The Captaincy of Pernambuco succeeded through the plantation of sugarcane, and thus formed the basis for the Viceroyalty of Grão-Pará. The Captaincy of São Vicente succeeded through the explorations of the hinterlands known as ''bandeiras'', and was at the origin of the Viceroyalty of Brazil (later the province of São Paulo).

In the Spanish Empire

Captaincies (''capitanías'', in Spanish) were a subdivision of a viceroyalty in colonial Spanish-America and the Spanish-Philippines, established in areas under risk of foreign invasion or Indian attack. The captaincy general was governed by a captain general, who was basically a military officer with plenipotentiary civilian powers and authority. Some captaincies general, such as Venezuela, Guatemala and Chile were eventually split off from their viceroyalties for better-administration purposes.
Although under the nominal jurisdiction of their Viceroys, Captains General were practically independent, because of their special military functions and the considerable distance of their districts from the viceroyal capital, having a direct relationship with the King and the Council of the Indies, in Madrid.

Spanish Captaincies

★ Puerto Rico (1509)

★ Santo Domingo (1540)

★ Chile (1541), due the War of Arauco. Originally part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, it split off in the late 1790s.

★ Guatemala (1560)

★ Yucatan (1564), which included, besides Yucatan proper, Campeche and Quintana Roo. It became an Intendencia in 1786.

★ Philippines (1565)

★ New Granada (1563), which became a viceroyalty in 1717.

★ Cuba (1764), which included the Louisiana Territory acquired from France in 1763. Split off from New Spain upon the latter's independence as Mexico.

★ Venezuela (1777, split off from the Viceroyalty of New Spain)

See also

★ States of Brazil