Captaincy General of the Azores

Exterior of the Palace of the Captain-General (Palácio dos Capitães Generais), where the Captain-General of the Azores presided.

The Captaincy General of the Azores was a politico-administrative structure of governance imposed in the Azores on 2 August 1766, with its seat in Angra. It remained the de facto system of governance for 65 years, until it was abolished on 4 June 1832 by D. Peter IV, but by 1828 its de jure status had made it nonoperational, owing to the revolutionary movements that lead to the Liberal Wars. The creation of the Captaincy-General was part of the Pombaline reforms to the Portuguese administration, during the reign of Joseph I, under the initiatives of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, then prime minister. A Captaincy-General operated from the Palace of the Captains-General, under the direction of the titular Captain-General, who operated as the Governor of the Azores, with additional jurisdiction on every island of the Azorean archipelago. The Captaincy-General was succeeded by the Province of the Azores, an ephemeral administrative structure that was collapse in the immediate years.