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A captaincy is a historical administrative division of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. Each was governed by a captain general.

In the Portuguese Empire, captaincies (capitanias, in Portuguese) were the administrative divisions and hereditary fiefs of the Portuguese state in some of its colonies.

Before the discovery of Brazil (1500), there were captaincies in the Portuguese Atlantic possessions of Madeira and the Azores Islands and in other island and settlements along the African coast.

The most important captaincies were, however, in the colony of Terra de Santa Cruz, or Land of the Holy Cross (modern Brazil). Each was delivered to a single captaincy general (capitão-mor, or capitão-donatário), who was a Portuguese nobleman. They were straight stripes of variable height of land, divided parallel to the Equator from the coast to the Tordesilhas Line, created by King John III of Portugal in 1534.

The captaincies in Brazil were initially fifteen in total, granted to twelve donatários. They were the following:

All but two failed. The Captaincy of Pernambuco succeeded through the plantation of sugarcane, and thus formed the basis for the Viceroyalty of Grão-Pará. The Captaincy of São Vicente succeeded through the explorations of the hinterlands known as bandeiras, and was at the origin of the Viceroyalty of Brazil (later the province of São Paulo).

1534 Hereditary Captaincies

1573 Two Viceroyalties

Captaincies (capitanías, in Spanish) were a subdivision of a viceroyalty in colonial Spanish-America and the Spanish-Philippines, established in areas under risk of foreign invasion or Indian attack. The captaincy general was governed by a captain general, who was basically a military officer with plenipotentiary civilian powers and authority. Some captaincies general, such as Venezuela, Guatemala and Chile were eventually split off from their viceroyalties for better-administration purposes.

Although under the nominal jurisdiction of their Viceroys, Captains General were practically independent, because of their special military functions and the considerable distance of their districts from the viceroyal capital, having a direct relationship with the King and the Council of the Indies, in Madrid.

• Puerto Rico (1509)
• Santo Domingo (1540)
• Chile (1541), due the War of Arauco. Originally part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, it split off in the late 1790s.
• Guatemala (1560)
• Yucatan (1564), which included, besides Yucatan proper, Campeche and Quintana Roo. It became an Intendencia in 1786.
• Philippines (1565)
• New Granada (1563), which became a viceroyalty in 1717.
• Cuba (1764), which included the Louisiana Territory acquired from France in 1763. Split off from New Spain upon the latter's independence as Mexico.
• Venezuela (1777, split off from the Viceroyalty of New Spain)

• States of Brazil
• Captain-major