Captaincy of São Paulo and Minas de Ouro

The Captaincy of São Paulo and Minas de Ouro was a captaincy of colonial Brazil, created in 1709 by the Portuguese Crown in the aftermath of the War of the Emboabas. It was formed through the purchase of the Captaincy of São Vicente and the Captaincy of Paranaguá from their donataries and the incorporation of parts of the Captaincy of Itanhaém. The new royal captaincy was designed to strengthen royal control over the rich goldfields that had recently been discovered in the hinterland of southeastern Brazil.

With its capital in the town of São Paulo, the captaincy existed for just over a decade. At its greatest extent, it encompassed most of the territory of present-day São Paulo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina to the south, and wide interior areas that would later become Minas Gerais, Goiás, Tocantins, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso and parts of Rondônia. In 1720, following the Vila Rica Revolt, the Crown dismembered the captaincy, creating the separate Captaincy of Minas Gerais and re-designating the remainder as the Captaincy of São Paulo.

The article below is based on a translated and restructured version of the corresponding entry in the Portuguese-language Wikipedia, supplemented with material from specialist historiography on the political and territorial formation of colonial São Paulo and Minas Gerais.