In 1754, in an attempt to revert the serious economic crisis that hit the State of Grão Pará and Maranhão, located in the Northeast of Brazil, the Governor at that time, Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado, asked his brother, the Marquis of Pombal, Prime Minister of Portugal, to make his best effort at the royal palace to approve a trading company aimed at transporting black slaves to be traded in that state, in order to substitute for indigenous workforce, which was little accustomed to this work. With a view to fastening the process, on the mere basis of his memory and experience, the Governor wrote and sent his brother the minutes of that company's bylaws. His twenty-seven paragraphs can be considered ahead of their time and contain various concepts recommended as Corporate Governance practices nowadays. Considering that there are more than two hundred years between Mendonça Furtado's initiative and studies on Corporate Governance, it should be asked: Is Corporate Governance a new name for ancient practices?
Corporate Governance; Accounting History; Grão Pará and Maranhão General Trading Company