The clerk of the Olinda Chamber

This work aims to analyse the materiality of the Portuguese royal policy of donating the property of offices in the Capitania of Pernambuco, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the symbolic and pecuniary capital directly associated with that customary administrative practice. To this end, the emblematic trajectory of the Miranda de Almeida family in the clerk's office of the Olinda Chamber will be used, as they held the title of that office for approximately a century. For this purpose, we used the Manuscripts of the Conselho Ultramarino and other documents. These sets were transcribed and analyzed in the light of the discussions on the New Political History, focusing specifically on the cultural aspect of this current. The indicative and onomastic method was used, concomitantly, as a conductor of the investigations. Finally, it was perceived that the dilemmas that constantly fissured the social fabric throughout the Empire and the Capitania of Pernambuco, namely, were the same ones that imposed limits and possibilities in the Portuguese royal policy of concession and maintenance of the property of the office of clerk of the Olinda Chamber.