The March “Entail of the Month” is presenting the Mosquitos Estate, founded on 29 August 1531, at Rua de Alconchel, Évora, by André Rodrigues dos Mosquitos even if the entailed properties were located 3,000 km away, on Santiago Island in Cape Verde.

André Rodrigues dos Mosquitos exercised functions in the Cape Verdean fiscal officialdom, as an accountant of the islands of Cape Verde (1524-1528) and factor of Santiago (1526-1527) and acquiring the properties that make up the Mosquitos Estate due to the influence of the positions he held.

This entail also emerged as the outcome of a favourable policy that the Crown had been developing in Cape Verde since the mid-fourteenth century to attract individuals such as the founder of the Mosquitos Estate. However, the binding entailment model did not seem to adapt to the long-term socioeconomic difficulties experienced in the Cape Verdean context. Nevertheless, this lineage bound property survived until October 1864, the date when the Entailment Bond Abolition Decree, ratified and applied one year earlier in mainland Portugal, came into force on the island of Santiago.

To find out more details, visit this page with all the information about this Entail of the Month, as well as other entails made available in the meantime, at: https://www.vinculum.fcsh.unl.pt/entail-of-the-month.

You can also contribute to this initiative by making suggestions for future entails of the month and any details you may be able to provide. To this end, please contact the project at: vinculum@fcsh.unl.pt.

The VINCULUM project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Professor of NOVA FCSH and researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies, awarded the first ERC Consolidator Grant to a Portuguese researcher in the field of History.