ABSTRACT
This article summarizes the detailed work involved in an archival processing project to describe the historical manuscripts of the Government Secretariat of the Captaincy of São Paulo, held today by the São Paulo State Public Archive. Seeking to understand the logic of accumulation and production of the holdings through an interdisciplinary approach that combines history and archival science, the project sought to recover the history of the archives from their own sedimented layers. Respecting the archival principle that the organization of a fonds should reflect the organic logic of its creator entity, thus contributing to the understanding of the functions and activities responsible for generating the documents, the article also sheds light on the complicated paths taken by the archives of the Luso-Brazilian administration until eventually becoming a source for historians.
Keywords:
Captaincy of São Paulo; archive; archives history