This article approaches the involvement of Portuguese America's governors who had conflicts of authority in the captainships that they governed and how they were inserted in clientelistic networks throughout these disagreements. Having as protagonist the 3º Count of Assumar, dom Pedro Miguel de Almeida Portugal, we compare his trajectory to governors that were also accused of enrichment and disobediences. All our analysis privileges the way the social networks function and how such nets served to give support or offered resistance to the governors nominated for the Crown.
governor; clientelistic networks; governance networks; conflicts