ABSTRACT
This article proposes an analysis of the history of Brazilian historiography between the 1830s and the 1930s, placing Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Raízes do Brasil (1936) in the essay tradition of historical interpretation that characterized the first decades of the Republic. I suggest the hypothesis, based on the studies of Arnaldo Momigliano and Reinhart Koselleck, that among the conditions of emergence of this tradition are the relations between the critical erudition, which defines the historical method, and the synthetic intention, characteristic of the modern philosophy of history. In this sense, from varied sources, the study follows the movement that led to reflections on history in Brazil from the neighborhood with the philosophy to the forms of approximation with the social sciences, tracing the passage from the model of philosophical history to that of the sociological synthesis, in which historical essays can be inserted.
Keywords:
Brazilian history of historiography; historical essay; Raízes do Brasil