The purpose of this short communication is to establish the similarities and differences between two periods and two processes of "senhorialização (aristrocratization)" and "centralização do poder régio (centralization of royal power)" in disparate geographic territories: one, the already well-established European territory of the Portuguese Kingdom in the time of D. Dinis; the other, the vast and undefined space of the recently discovered Brazil in the time of King John III. The comparison is an insignificant (and even debatable) one, until we take into account the differences in centuries, the disparate geographic areas, and the fact that it arises from two unequal legal and political practices: a court ruling and a government ruling. Meanwhile, the text also analyzes the relevance of the expression Idade Média brasileira - The Brazilian Middle Ages - (1520-1580), which was the title of one of the volumes of the well-known História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil, coordinated by Carlos Malheiro Dias and edited between 1921 to 1924 to commemorate the first centennial of the independence from the old colony, in Portugal and Brazil. Comparing the kinds of economic systems, the aristocracy models of society and the forms of articulation with the royal power, it is clear that there is a lack of economic and social research on that sad history, and that this is one of its main gaps. Finally, this paper calls for a critical reading of a monumental (albeit incomplete) work on the historiography of the Portuguese Expansion, relatively ostracized and forgotten, but which, paradoxically, is widely used and cited, not completely hiding the discretion with which it makes use of the wealth of documentation transcribed in its appendices and in some of its summaries.
Royal centralization; feudal lordship; captaincy-donatary; sesmaria; letter of donation; charter; State transportation