Institutional formation, social order and economic dynamics in colonial Amazonia (1616–1808)

Abstract

This article examines the Portuguese colonization of the Amazon (1616-1808) in light of the New Institutional Economics, seeking to identify the main arrangements that shaped the regional social order and its economy. To this end, it examines: (i) the regime of royal concessions and the monopoly of the General Company of Grão-Pará and Maranhão; (ii) the actions of religious orders, whose reductions disciplined indigenous populations and structured collection routes, later dismantled by the Indian Directorate and the expulsion of the Jesuits (1757-59); and (iii) the patrimonialist bureaucratic establishment, sustained by clientelism and violence, which distributed positions, lands and privileges to preserve the dominant coalition. It then describes the Sertão Drug Cycle, showing how the extraction of forest spices financed this extractive institutional matrix, marked by high transaction costs, barriers to innovation and concentration of income. It concludes that the process forged a limited-access social order whose path dependence conditioned subsequent regional development.