How words draw borders: the meanings of “paulista” in Pedro Taques’ nobility titles from mid-18th century

Abstract

Pedro Taques de Almeida Paes Leme’s nobility titles, dated from mid-18th century until his death, in 1777, were written during a period of intense redefinition of the captaincy of São
Paulo’s relations with the Portuguese Crown and the colony as a whole. After its administrative subordination to Rio de Janeiro (1748-1765) and amidst border negotiations between Spanish and Portuguese America for the signing and implementation of the Treaty of Madrid (1750), the Paulistas (inhabitants of São Paulo) sought to expand the recognition of their conquests and consequently gain more benefits. Articulating politics, territorial definitions, and both past
and contemporary relations with indigenous groups, Taques writes hundreds of requests for recognition of nobility for the main families of São Paulo. By systematically analyzing the remaining genealogies, one can observe the narrative strategies employed by such requests and the builtin meanings of a particular and limited group within this population: the “paulistas”. This paper examines these nobility titles in their writing and by extraction of quantitative data, circumscribing the establishment of certain values, backgrounds and habits exclusively to said “paulistas”—and
not to all the captaincy population—, subverting century old legends and documents that painted them as a violent, cruel, and insubordinate group. Lastly, this resignification will be instrumental to the 20th century historical construction of the bandeirante mythology, which generalizes the association between these men and a common ethos shared by all paulistas.