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Widows as Obstacles to Business: British Objections to Brazilian Marriage and Inheritance Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Muriel Nazzari
Muriel Nazzari
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

Implicit in the hegemonic “civilizing” discourse of nineteenth-century British imperialism was the assumption that Great Britain was a model to be followed by backward societies. Included in the British characterisics to be emulated was the status of their women. In this article I turn this assumption on its head by arguing that the capital accumulation permitting the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was furthered not only by primogeniture, as many scholars have correctly argued, but also by a marriage regime in which wives and widows had few rights to property, for husbands were usually sole owners of all marital property and had full testamentary freedom. This arrangement permitted property to concentrate in male hands. In contrast, the marriage system based on Portuguese and Brazilian law was one of full community property, which gave wives veto power in the sale or mortgaging of all real estate and assured widows rights of succession to one-half of the marital property. This system was combined with limited testamentary freedom and equally partible inheritance for both sons and daughters. I argue that, though it was more equitable than the British system, it worked against the accumulation of capital.

Type
Merchants and the State
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 781 - 802
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1995

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References

I wish to thank Jeanne Peterson and an anonymous referee for this journal for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this study. The research for this essay was funded by several Indiana University Summer Faculty Fellowships, a Fulbright Area Research Grant, and an award from the joint Committee on Latin American Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.

1 See, for instance, Himani Bannerji, “Age of Consent or Age of Coercion? Hegemony, Social Reform, and Women in Nineteenth-Century Bengal” (paper presented to the Social Science History Association, Baltimore, November 4, 1993).

2 See, for instance, Arquivo Histórico do Itamaratí, (Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations)(hereafter cited as AHI), 239–1–6–III, “Coleçōes Especiáis,” a manuscript pamphlet in Spanish on the “English Constitution and the King's Prerogatives” also in AHI, 25, 4, 11–12,Google Scholar a copy of Commercial Law of the World, or the Mercantile Law of the United Kingdom compared with Codes and Laws of Commerce of the Following Mercantile Countries (London, 1854).Google Scholar

3 The 1810 Treaty was signed after the Portuguese king, Dom Joāo VI, had, with the help of the British, moved with his court to Brazil in 1808 to escape the Napoleonic conquest of Portugal (Bethell, Leslie, ed., Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822–1930 [Cambridge, U.K. Cambridge University Press, 1989], 14–20, 89–94;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Barman, Roderick J., Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852 [ Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988], 42–48).Google Scholar

4 The importance for Great Britain and for Brazil of British trade with Brazil in the nineteenth century is described in Miller, Rory, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Longman, 1993);Google ScholarPlatt, D.C.M., Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (London: A and C. Black, 1972);Google ScholarGraham, Richard, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

5 In 1427, for instance, the king of Portugal gave British merchants the same privileges that Genoese and Prezantiz [sic] merchants had. Six years later, in 1433, the Portuguese king gave protection to all foreign merchants against local people. Four years later, in 1437, the king allowed British and French merchants to come to Portugal even if there was a war between the countries. Then, six years after that, in 1443, he passed another law decreeing that their goods not be confiscated or stolen (even by Portuguese corsairs), etcetera. Public Records Office, London (hereafter cited as PRO), Foreign Office (hereafter cited as FO), 811/1.

The 1654 treaty was called the “Great Charter of English Liberties in Portugal”; scholars judge that its provisions granted the English more rights in Portugal than the Portuguese themselves had. Manchester, Alan K., British Pre-Eminence in Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933), 9–12;Google Scholar see also, Shillington, Violet Mary and Chapman, A. B. Wallis, The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal (Medieval and Modern) New York: Routledge, 1907,Google Scholar ch. 3; Prestage, Edgar, ed., Chapters in Anglo-Portuguese Relations Watford: Voss and Michael, 1935;Google ScholarFisher, Harold E. S., The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce, 1700–1770 London:Methuen, 1971.Google Scholar

6 Article 7 of the Treaty of 1810, as quoted by the British Vice-Consul in Lisbon in 1826 (PRO, BT 1/223); in the treaty, Article 7 is couched in equal terms for both parties. See Coleçāo das Leis do Brazil de 1810 Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1891.Google Scholar In George Canning's instructions to the British minister plenipotentiary who negotiated the Treaty of 1810, three privileges were considered non-negotiable: (1) the Judge Conservator of the British, (2) the exemption of the English from jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and (3) the security of the property of British subjects who died intestate. See Manchester, , British Pre-Eminence, 79.Google Scholar The article on testamentary freedom was not contested by the Portuguese or Brazilians in the elaboration of the treaties of 1810 and 1827, nor has it been given much importance in later historical works. For instance, Sodré, Nelson Wernek, in As Raçōes da Indepêndncia (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizaçāo Brasileira), 1965, 161–3,Google Scholar lists more than thirty galling concessions to the British, but testamentary freedom and the British consul's right to settle estates of intestate British decedents were not even mentioned. The most offensive concession for Brazil in 1827 was the continuation of a Judge Conservator of the Boritish, even after Brazil's 1824 constitution made everyone equal under the law and eliminated all private jurisdictions. See Carvalho, Carlos M. Delgado de, História Diplomática do Brasil Sāo Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1959, 41, 163–64;Google Scholar see also, Freitas, Caio de, George Canning eo Brazil: Influência da diplomácia inglêsa na formaçā brasileira, 2 vols. Sāo Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1958. Every single case settled by the Judge Conservator included a certified copy of the extraterritorial rights of the British. See, for instance, Arquivo Nacional (hereafter cited as AN), lata 7392, Conservadoria Ingleza, maço 704, no. 11.Google Scholar

7 British consuls did not recover their full right to settle estates of intestate British subjects until 1873, then lost it completely when that right expired in 1887. See Manchester, , British Preeminence, 298–305.Google Scholar

8 Decree no. 160 of 9 May 1842 and Decree no. 422 of 27 June 1845. Also AHI, Relatōro da Repartiçāo dos Negócios Extrangeiros Apresentado à Assembléa Geral Legislativa na quarta Sessāo da Sexta legislatura, pelo respectivo ministro e secretario de estado Barāo de Cayrú (Rio de Janeiro, 1847, p. 1.)

9 Almeida, Candido Mendes de, ed., Codigo philippino ou ordenaçōes do reino de Portugal, 14th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Philomatico, 1870, hereafter called Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 91.)Google Scholar

10 Both reasons were mentioned in a letter from Henry Howard to Limpo de Abreu dated April 24, 1854. AHI, Relatróio da Repartiçāo dos Negócios Extrangeiros (hereafter cited as AHI, RRNE), anexo A, p. 27.

11 AHI, Legaçōes Extrageiras, 284–4–5 1854, vol. 21, Memorandum by Consul Westwood, Rio de Janeiro, April 1854.

12 AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, G. Bretanha, 284–4–1, Letters from the British consul dated January 27, 1845, and from the Manchester merchants to the Earl of Aberdeen written in April of that same year. Also see AH', Extracto de um Aviso dirigido à Repartçāo dos Negocios Extrageiros pelo Ex. S. Ministro da Justiça, February 1845, and a Portuguese translation of the April 1845 letter from the Manchester merchants.

13 Emphasis in original. AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, Grāo Bretanha, notas 1846–1947, book 284–4–2, Letter (April 1846 objecting to Decree no. 160 of May 9, 1842, and Decree no. 422 of June 27, 1845.) Also see AHI, 284–4–3, 1848–50, Consular memorandum dated April 2, 1846 regarding a conversation between the British consul and the Brazilian secretary of state concerning articles 1 and 11 of the above decrees.

14 See Nazzari, Muriel, Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in Sāo Paulo, Brazil (1600–1900) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). I studied judicial settlements of 219 nineteenth-century estates.Google Scholar

15 Codigo commercial do imperio do Brasil, Annotado pelo Desembargador Salustiano Orlando Costa, de Araujo, 4th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Laemmer, 1886, (hereafter cited as Codigo commercial), sec. 7, art, 335, par. 4, n. 491.Google Scholar

16 Manchester, , British Pre-eminence, 300–301.Google Scholar

17 AHI, Relatório dos Negócios Extrangeiros, Anexo 62, July 1, 1846. The United States consular representative argued that the treaty between the United States and Brazil should continue in perpetuity and that the law of 1845 was not applicable to American consuls.

18 Many letters from the British consul to the British and Brazilian governments protest the intervention of the Juiz dos Orfāos in British estate settlements. Examples are AHI, RRNE, nos. 93, 102, 104, dated April 2, 1846, January 27 and June 24, 1845, and April 1854; also, AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, 284–4–2, 1846–47, Letters of January 5, April 2, May 6, November 23 and December 11, 30, 31, 1846, and June 30, 1847.

19 To be valid, a Brazilian will required five witnesses and certification by a licensed notary (tabeliāo). Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 80.

20 AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, G. Bretanha, notas, 1845 and 1846–47, 284–4–1 and 2844–2, Letters of October 1845 and May 1846.

21 Another example is that of John Craven, who died in 1853. The local Juiz dos Orfāos took possession of his property, including one female slave and her two children, though Craven had left a document stating he wanted them freed. After the British consul and the Brazilian secretary of state intervened, Craven's slaves were manumitted in January of 1854; thus the will was recognized according to British rather than Brazilian law. AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, Grāo Bretanha, 284–4–4 and 284–4–5. Correspondence among the Brazilian minister of foreign affairs, the Brazilian secretary of state, and the British consul, October 8, 1853, and January 10, 1854.

The consular concern with settling these estates was a very small part of the problems between the two nations. The 1840s were a decade of increasing British pressure for the end of the slave trade, which should have ended long before, according to the 1826 treaty between Great Britain and Brazil. See Bethell, Leslie, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil, and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Manchester, , British Pre-eminence, 302.Google Scholar

23 Letter dated April 24, 1854, from Consul Westwood. AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, notas, 1854, vol. 21, 284–4–5.

24 He assumed that all widows were British.

25 June 16, 1854. The Earl of Clarendon, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had received complaints from several Britons in Brazil regarding the disposal of their property by will; and in a letter to the consul dated August 10, 1854, Clarendon approved the note and memorandum discussed in the text. AHI, 284–4–5, vol. 21, 1854.

26 Another frequent issue was the right, under Brazilian law, of illegitimate children to succeed abintestado when they were born from single parents who could have married. See Lewin, Linda, “Natural and Illegitimate Children in Brazilian Inhertance Law from Colony to Empire: A Methodological Note,” The Americas, 48:301 1992, 351–96. In the case of William Harrison, Brazilian lawyers sued for the rights of his two illegitimate children, born of a colored woman in Minas Gerais. AN, caixa 7392, maço 704, no. 11140–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 48.Google Scholar

28 Holcombe, Lee, Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women's Property Laws in Nineteenth-Century England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983, 230).Google Scholar

29 Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 96. In the nineteenth century, Spain and most Spaish American nations also had laws to prohibit full testamentary freedom; they made equally partible inheritance obligatory and gave wives a partnership position in the marriage, with rights of succession. It would be interesting to know why societies that were no less patriarchal than Great Britain chose an ambilineal system, in which property and lineage passed through both husbands and wives, as well as both sons and daughters, in contrast to Britain's choice of a patrlineal system. spring, Eileen, in Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300–1800 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993, argues that English law became much more patrilineal during the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries than the English common law had originally been).Google Scholar

30 See Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 42. Widows and widowers could will one-third of their estates (already diminished by half with the spouse's death).

31 See Metcalf, Alida C., “Fathers and Sons: The Politics of Inhertance in a Colonial Brazilian Township,” in Hispanic American Historical Review, 66:3 1986, 455–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Though the husband was its owner, the wife had to give her consent for him to sell any real estate that she had brought to the marriage, including chattels real (leasehold land), and they reverted to her at his death; but the fate of all the rest of her property ultimately depended on her husband's wishes. Stocks and bonds, classified as “chattels incorporeal” or “choses in action,” customarily reverted to her at her husband's death, as did the objects included in the classification, “paraphernalia”: her jewels and clothes. However, if her husband sold the stocks ad bonds or her jewels during his lifetime, the money became his personal property to dispose of as he saw fit. Moreover, the property a woman brought to marriage was liable for his debts, including her paraphernalia. Holcombe, , Wives and Property, 22–23, 33–34, 228.Google Scholar

33 Curtesy and dower rights were completely eliminated in England only in 1925. See Holcombe, , Wives and Property, 230.Google Scholar Some scholars argue that, long before the Dower Act of 1833, dower was many times simply forgotten. See Staves, Susan, Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990, 27–28, 205.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see spring, Eileen, “The Family, Strict Settlement, and Historians,” in Law, Economy, and Society: Essays in the History of English Law, 1750–1914, Rubin, G. R. and Sugarman, David, eds. (Worcester, England: Professional Books, 1984, 170).Google Scholar

34 “A portion at common law became the immediate and absolute property of the husband, and he had to have estate sufficient to guarantee a jointure in return for it. Land at law did not pass absolutely to the husband, only its use.” A widow regained it, though not many women received land in their portion. spring, “Family,” 182.

35 spring, Law, Land, and Family, 39–58.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 54–58. Assuming a woman's husband and father had equal incomes (and her portion equaled one year of her father's income), spring shows that the resulting jointure, paid out during fourteen years of widowhood, was only one-third of what dower would have been.

37 Staves, , Married Women's Separate Property, 100.Google Scholar

38 In fact, the “very rules that conferred ownership on women 's Property Act of 1882] gave them a kind of ownership different from that imagined in a liberal property regime—entitlement to profit from capital, but not control over capital itself or the power to alienate capital.” Staves, , Married Women's Separate Property, 222. In Brazil, a widow had full control of all her property, and a wife had some control of the real estate she and her husband owned as community property.Google Scholar

39 Humphries, John, First Report Made to His Majesty by the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Law of England Respecting Real Property London: House of Commons, 1829, 258,Google Scholar as cited by Staves, , Married Women's Separate Property, 35.Google Scholar

40 These cases took place under either the 1810 or 1827 Commercial Treaty and were found in correspondence between British consuls and the British or Brazilian governments or in the judicial proceedings of suits before the Juiz Conservador dos Inglezes [sic], the special judge who tried all civil and criminal suits in which a British subject was a party.

41 All the heirs lived in Halifax, British North America. AHI, Autoridades Judiciárias, 1852, no. 292–1–7, Notice from the Juiz dos Orfāos, Porto Alêgre; also, AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, notas, 1846–1947, no. 284–4–2.

42 It could be argued that British laws and practices regarding widows and property also responded to husbands' fears that their property would end up in other men's hands if their widows owned it outright and remarried, so that their children would not receive their rightful inheritance. Under Portuguese and Brazilian law, if a widow remarried a man with a larger or similar fortune, her forced heirs would experience no loss because they would receive their share of the new community property when she died. The problem from the children's point of view would come about if the propertied widow married a man with little or no fortune. Some widows who chose to marry a man with much less property protected their forced heirs by making a prenuptial agreement specifying the spouses would own their property separately. For example, Joanna Soares de Sigueira, 1776, Arquivo do Estado de Sāo Paulo, Inventários Nāo Publicadoes, hereafter cited as AESPINP #ord. 548, caixa 71. Yet it was British law and custom that gave husbands such great prerogatives and did not allow or encourage prenuptial agreements separating marital property that made a widow's remarriage problematic for the children as heirs.

43 AN, lata 7388, maço 700, no. 10969 (a suit between the British consul, Robert Herket, and John Connel, Mrs. Dickinson's second husband, in 1837). In Great Britain, these dispositions would have kept the inheritance tax from being paid twice. In Brazil, only bequests were subject to an inheritance tax; successors by law paid none.

44 The exception to this rule applied in the case of a prenuptial contract (Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 46). Such a contract could set up a marriage regime different from the community-property arrangement established by law, such as a regime with complete separation of property (in which the widow remained with only the property she took to marriage or inherited subsequently) or the Spanish system (in which property belonged separately to each spouse, but the profits derived from the husband's administration of the combined properties were shared equally -here, the widow remained with her property, plus half the profits accrued during the marriage). Brazilian law did not, however, allow setting up a marriage regime that would disinherit children. Children could never be disinherited by a testator, except in extreme cases, such as attempted murder of the parent. Also see Nazzari, , Disappearance, xviii 142–48, 189Google Scholar n. 16. See also, Silva, Maria Beatriz Nizza da, Sistema de casamento no Brasil colonial Sāo Paulo: T. A.Queiroz, 1984,Google Scholar and, for the Spanish system, Lavrin, Asunción and Edith Couturier, “;Dowries and Wills: A View of Women's Socioeconomic Role in Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640–1790,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 59:2 (1979, 280–304).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Letter dated May 1, 1826, Lisbon, from Consul Meagher to Sir William à Court. PRO, BT 1/223/17937.

46 See Doran's will: PRO, PROB 11/1535 (1812, p. 99). The couple were childless. He had bequeathed each of his four houses: one to his wife, one to his sister, and one to each nephew. The sum of 3,000 pounds sterling in cash was divided equally between his wife and sister; and the worth of his stocks and bonds were bequeathed as follows: 2,100 pounds sterling to his wife and 3,075 pounds sterling to his sister. The rest of his estate was divided in four equal parts among his wife, sister, and two nephews. Following Portuguese law, his wife would have received one full half of the whole estate, with his sister (as his collateral heir) receiving the other half, which explains the consul's comment regarding the deprivation of his nephews of their bequests.

47 Examples of these include (1) the seventeenth-century widow, Pires, D. Ignez, called a matrona (Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto, Lutas de famílias no Brasil [Sāo Paulo: Brasiliana, 1980]Google Scholar, chap. 4); (2) the eighteenth-century childless widow who delayed settling her husband's estate for twenty-three years, using one legal ruse after another, thereby enabling herself to administer the whole community property without giving her adult step-children their inheritances (Francisco de Godoy Preto, 1750–1773, AESP, INP., #ord. 550 c. 73, and #ord. 523 c. 46); (3) the nineteenth-century coronela, “Dona Iaiá,” who exercised great political power in Parafba (Lewin, Linda, Politics and Parentela in Paraíba [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987], 192–94);Google Scholar (4) Dona Veridiana in Sāo Paulo (Levy, Darrell E., A Familia Prado [Sāo Paulo: Cultura 70, 1977], 87–99, 152–55);Google Scholar (5) Donna Anna de Castro (Chandler, Billy Jaynes, The Feitosas and the Serāo dos Inhamuns: The History of a Family and a Community in Northeast Brazil, 1700–1930 [Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1972], 91–96).Google Scholar

48 Unfortunately, only part of the record of the judicial process survives, from folio no. 82 to folio no. 101, which is not the end of the process. Harvey's property consisted mainly of a coffee plantation, with a two-story house, slaves, and slave quarters. AN, Guilherme Harvey, lata 6503, doc. no. 118, caixa 2340.

49 Wives in England were allowed no testamentary freedom at all until the Married Women's Property Act of 1882. Holcombe, , Wives and Property, 228.Google Scholar

50 Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 48.

51 Arquivo do Ministério da Justiça, Vila Leopoldina, Sāo Paulo (hereafter cited as AMJSP), Inventário de Leonardo Loskill, 1869, Segundo Offício da Família no. 555. After the expiration of the 1827 treaty, many British subjects went along with Brazilian practices. I studied various estates of persons with English names and found this to be so. For instance, AN, D. Catharina Whittle, 1853, Juizo dos Orfãos, lata 6503, maço 102, no. 1950.

52 Codigo commercial, ch. III, sec. 7, art. 335, par. 4, n. 491.Google Scholar

53 An intermediate case, in which everything but the husband's business in partnership with a nephew was inventoried and divided among her heirs, is AMJSP, D. Cándida Maria Miquelina de Oliveira (1859, 2 Ofício da Família, no. 352). When the widower died five years later, the business partnership had still not been dissolved.

54 For two examples, AN, Registro das Consultas do Tribunal da Junta do Commercio, 1815, vol. 3, fols. 35, 98.

55 See Codigo commercial, sec. 7, art. 335, par. 4, n. 491; and Codigo philippino, liv. 4, tit. 44, par. 828, n. 6.

56 This is certainly the view one receives from some studies of women's property rights in Great Britain. For instance, Staves, (Married Women's Separate Property, 225) argues that widows usually did not administer property or capital because they received dower, jointure, or trusts, that is, income from capital, but not the capital itself.Google Scholar

57 PRO, FO 268133, Letter to British consul from the Juiz de Orfāos of Nazareth, July 10, 1883. A similar case is that of Thomas Walsh. PRO, FO 268133, Letters to consul dated August 8, 1881, and February 21, 1882.

58 He may also have been looking for a commission, a practice suggested in a despatch to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, dated May 5, 1837, Bahia. PRO, FO 268/11.

59 See Manchester, , British Pre-eminence, 302.Google Scholar

60 AHI, Legaçōes Extrangeiras, notas 1854, vol. 21, 284–4–5, Letter dated April 24, 1854.

61 Brazilian jurists argued that, since this law modified a constitutional provision which established that all children born in Brazil were Brazilian, it was illegal because it was not a constitutional amendment.

62 Manchester, , British Pre-eminence, 302–4.Google Scholar

63 Holcombe, Wives and Property, 24, 229, for the system based on the Statutes of Distribution of 1670 and 1685, which held through the 1882 Married Women's Property Act and until 1925.

64 See “The Separation of Business from Family,” ch. 8 of Nazzari, Disappearance.Google Scholar

65 Staves, , Married Women's Separate Property, 36, and n. 19.Google Scholar

66 Sugarman, David and Rubin, Gerry R., “Toward a New History of Law and Material Society in England,” in Law, Economy, and Society, Rubin, G. R. and Sugarman, D., eds., 5–6. The authors maintain that though limited liability and general incorporation were gradually introduced from 1825 to 1862, most business was conducted under unincorporated partnership until the end of the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

67 Codigo de commercio, Lei n. 1083 de 22 de agosto de 1860. This law provided for creation of joint-stock companies but with government authorization. It was not until 1882 that they could be created freely (Lei n. 3150 de 4 de novembro de 1882). See also Sweigart, oseph E., Coffee Factorage and the Emergence of a Brazilian Capital Market, 1850–1888 (New York: Garland, 1987).Google Scholar

68 Those who had Brazilian heirs had already been following Brazilian law. This was especially true of Britons who had settled permanently in Brazil and lost contact with their British relatives. Examples include (1) Hugh Baird, a Scot who made his will according to the Brazilian fashion and whose estate was settled in the Brazilian way (see AN, Juizo da Primeira Vara de Orfáos hereafter cited as AN, Primeira Vara), 1860, caixa 4142, no. 1445; (2) Richard Bancroft, AN, Primeira Vara, 1855, Maço 100, no. 1903; (3) Thereza Gosling, AN, Primeira Vara, 1874, caixa 4249, No. 2382.

69 In the case of a married testator, this meant one-fourth instead of one-sixth of the community property. See Congresso Nacional—Annaes da Camara dos Deputados—Sessöes de 1907Google Scholar (month of December). Mexico adopted full testamentary freedom at the end of the nineteenth century, obviously also influenced by American and British usage. See Arrom, Silvia, “Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Civil Codes of 1870 and 1884,” Journal of Family History, 3:4 (Winter 1978, 3034–17).Google Scholar

70 Holcombe, , Wives and Property, 229.Google Scholar