ABSTRACT
The Historiography on the first three centuries of Brazil’s history has been marked, in the previous two decades, by an acute debate between two currents of analysis on our colonial background, namely, the one known as Old Colonial System and, the other, the Ancien Régime in the Tropics. Besides pointing out the main historiographic lines from which those currents stem, the article highlights the main divergences between these approaches, particularly concerning the definition of the dynamics of colonial Brazil’s economy and society. Thus, the argument goes, the wide divergence between those currents is due to the deepening observed in the revision and critics about Old Colonial System approach, which can be related to the influence of Economic Anthropology and the detachment of Marxism. This revisionism leads to the setting of an opposite line of approach, based on the concept of archaism.
Keywords:
Historiography; History of Brazil Colonial; Economic Anthropology