donatary captain

English

Noun

donatary captain (plural donatary captains)

1. (historical) One who held a donatary captaincy; a nobleman who had hereditary authority (granted in the 1530s) over a large tract of land in colonial Brazil, and who was responsible for paying taxes to the king and for seeing that the land was settled, developed, and defended against indigenous people and foreign invaders.
   • 1985, Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, page 254:

     The donatary captains were thus key figures in the debate, and their charters were the crucial documents to be interpreted.

   • 1994, Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, page 53:

     To profit from their grants, the donatary captains required an auxiliary population of Portuguese settlers.

   • 2019, Gabriel Paquette, The European Seaborne Empires, page 102:

     In the 1530s, the Crown issued hereditary land grants to several noblemen, called donatary captains.