Among subjects and royal officials: political and economic uses of the Atlantic Forest in the Comarca das Alagoas (1789-1799)
Comarca das Alagoas; José de Mendonça; Conservation of the Woods; forest administration.
The last decades of the seven hundred in Alagoas were marked by the advancement of the valorization of the natural world, carried out in the wake of the illustrated Luso-Brazilian reformism. The idea that the exploitation of natural resources could promote the political and economic strengthening of Portugal emerged in administrative decisions that tried to guarantee real exclusivism in plant extraction. This work aims to analyze how the Portuguese Crown and the inhabitants to the south of the Captaincy of Pernambuco interacted with the forest areas of the Comarca das Alagoas between the years 1789-1799. In this way, it seeks to understand how the royal power through its officers, the governor D. Tomás José de Melo and the ombudsman José de Mendonça de Matos Moreira, were responsible for elaborating political arrangements that aimed to manage the forests, as was the case of creation of the Conservatory of Woods of the Comarca das Alagoas. In addition, the research seeks to show how farmers, wood processors, planters, the private and real naval industry disputed the vegetables in the region under study.