Abstract
This article intends to examine some of the types of complaints from which overseas subjects sought and often succeeded in securing the intercession of the monarch and his Overseas Council in the face of officers’ anti-legal conduct. Explaining these instruments requires identifying their configurations, considering the “condition” of the person who asked, the way in which they asked, the reasons why they asked, the “remedies” actually requested, and, last, but not least, the institutional procedures that gave rise to at the Overseas Council – aspects that may, as I will argue, be, to a large extent, backed by the institution’s documents and archives. To do so, I depart from the corpus of the institution relevant to the capitania of Minas Gerais in the second half of the 18th century. My focus will be the formal and institutional world, considering it as a relevant dimension for understanding the legal culture of the period and the devices from which the royal power, through its Overseas Council, was present in the overseas territories and exercised, directly or indirectly, a function of control, or at least, of tutelage and discipline over the official corps.
Keywords
Overseas Council; Minas Gerais; Guarantee of Rights; Extrajudicial Petitions –Complaints