Entre pontes e muros: Tentativas de implantação do correio marítimo entre Portugal e o Brasil na primeira metade do século XVIII

Abstract

During the first half of eighteenth century, there were several attempts to establish a logistical structure for a regular transport of correspondence, outside of the fleet regime, between Portugal and its American colonies. Based on some documents of the Portuguese Ultramarine Council, this article analyses some of these projects. One of the most important attempts must be attributed to Francisco Peres de Sousa, an assistant of the mail service for the state of Brazil, who had been a former music teacher and was a whale fishing contractor on the Brazilian coast. In general, and despite the vehement defense of important people like Alexandre de Gusmão, such projects could not be accomplished, finding a vigorous opposition of the businessmen gathered around the Brotherhood of Holy Spirit. In this article it is argued that the failure of these projects, a result of a dispute between different groups of businessmen from Lisbon, was also a consequence of divergent views on the geopolitical and geoeconomic articulations on the ultramarine monarchy. This failure could also be considered as a consequence of different ways of understanding the relationship between time and distance at that time. The study of these obscure episodes allows us to approach not only a neglected aspect of the history of written communication systems, this technology of distance control, but also to grasp the operation of the modern "paper empires" from a new perspective.