Administração da Justiça em espaços coloniais. A experiência imperial portuguesa e os seus juízes, na época moderna

– This paper proposes to study the early-modern Portuguese magistracy to demonstrate a specific character of the Portuguese imperial experience which resided in an intense circulation of its agents, either between different colonial territories, either between the colonies and mainland Portugal. It underlines the precociousness of its bureaucratization, which derives from the notion of royal service and its non-transactional nature, since the early 16th century. The paper elaborates on the role played by magistrates and their circulation in the construction of a common juridical space that is built by the Portuguese crown throughout the early-modern period in its overseas territories. It ends up proposing some exploratory methodologies to map and measure the construction and extension of this bureaucratic network, making use of both prosopographical data and network analysis methods.