VINCULUM. Entailment Societies? Entails in the portuguese Atlantic (14th-17th Centuries)

Overview & Synopsis

This work focuses on the concept of “entailment societies”. Using the Atlantic as a laboratory for analysis, it reflects on how the Atlantic islands in the Portuguese sphere of influence - unpopulated territories that were progressively colonized and socially constructed by the Portuguese Crown - were organized, in social and economic terms, through entails. It therefore emphasizes the extraordinary importance of entails in the colonial appropriation of territory and in the subsequent configuration of social and power relations. As a collective work, it includes contributions from different authors on entailment in Brazil, Cape Verde and São Tomé, Madeira and the Azores between the 14th and 17th centuries.