“Merces” networks and career: a Luso-brazilian soldier “Desterro d’Angola” (1782-1789)

Abstract

The rising of a level of educated low patent military men in the Portuguese Colonies is a characteristic of the second half of the 18th Century. Their inclusion in the military career was complicated since the corporation was both the place for exiled criminals and the traditional place of noblemen. These military men traveled through many of the colonies and therefore shares with the Portuguese ruling elite a wider notion of the spacial and social diversity of the Empire. Meritocracy worked up to a certain level. After that, the corporation reproduced the social structure rigidity of the Ancien Regime. To get
acknowledgment and reward for their own merits, those not from rich
or illustrious families had to master the parental networks of the ruling elite, establishing some link with it. This is how paternalist networks were created, which can be though of as gift, or “merces” networks.