89

Up to the end of the 19th century, a « moral economy » governed the agrarian dynamics of rural freguesias in Brazil. Using primary sources, this paper studies how this set of norms limited the transmission of landed properties, leasing clauses and the market circulation of land rights. Those estates which were in joint tenancy served as a territorial basis for this system, and pointed to the continuation of unequal reciprocities and traditional rights burdening these properties, such as for instance the practice of granting sitios within seignorial estates. The management of these elements was predicated on a series of common concepts, both localized and seen as legitimate, which together constituted what we call a « moral economy ». Both substantively and in practice, these concepts diverged as much from the legal rules and regulations, as from the programmatic schemes evolved by State civil servants, or from the principles of private property.