Erário Régio
Erário Régio
Erário Régio, the Royal Treasury of Portugal. Its creation, on 22 December 1761, and the extinction of the Casa dos Contos were key measures of the reform program of the Marquês de Pombal to overhaul the fiscal bureaucracy. In the reorganized exchequer, four departments, staffed by trained accountants and reporting to the treasurer-general, supervised the income and expenditures of the crown with respect to the geographical divisions of Portugal and its empire: (1) the Court (the heartland) and Estremadura; (2) other provinces and Azores and Madeira; (3) Africa, Maranhão, and Bahia; and (4) Rio de Janeiro, East Africa, and Asia. Headed initially by Pombal himself, succeeding treasurers-general included other eminent statesmen: the Marquês de Angeja, the Marquês de Ponte de Lima, and Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho. With the passage of the court to Rio in 1808, the treasury was recreated in the colony. Subsequently abolished in 1832 in Portugal, in Brazil after independence (1822) the colonial department was superseded by the Tesouro Publico in 1824.
See alsoPombal, Marquês de (Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo); Portuguese Empire.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ruy D'abreu Torres, "Erário Régio," in Dicionario de Historia de Portugal, edited by Joel Serrão, vol. 2 (1965), pp. 67-68.
Additional Bibliography
Maxwell, Kenneth. Conflicts & Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750–1808. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Catherine Lugar