The Evolution of Brazilian Historiography: From University Foundations to Dependency Theory

Although some Brazilian institutions claim earlier origins, the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), founded in 1934, is recognized as the nation's first modern research university. The immense wealth generated by the coffee export economy transformed São Paulo into Brazil's richest and most populous state by the 1930s. This economic power allowed the state's elite to recruit renowned European academics like Fernand Braudel, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roger Bastide to help establish USP. This founding mission reinforced a longstanding intellectual preference for European, particularly French, thought over American influence, a tendency that would only begin to shift with the massive global rise of U.S. academic culture in the 1970s.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, seminal historical analysis continued to emerge from non-academic intellectuals. Two landmark works are Victor Nunes Leal’s Coronelismo, Enxada e Voto (1949) and Raimundo Faoro’s Os Donos do Poder (1958). Both provided powerful, enduring analyses of Brazil's social and political foundations, tracing contemporary structures back to the Portuguese colonial heritage. Faoro emphasized the development of a patrimonial state built on political patronage, while Leal masterfully described the coronelismo system, where local landowning "colonels" exchanged regional control for federal loyalty. Notably, both authors were legally trained, only later transitioning to university roles.

The 1960s saw a vibrant, politically diverse intellectual community flourish alongside expanding universities. Historical writing across the spectrum sought to explain the nation's past to diagnose its present and future. This trend is exemplified by the groundbreaking economic works of Celso Furtado, such as Formação Econômica do Brasil (1959). Furtado's leftist vision analyzed the historical roots of underdevelopment, seeking policy solutions through rigorous historical examination. A pattern emerged of interdisciplinary work by scholars formally trained in law, economics, and social sciences, profoundly influenced by the Annales School and various strands of Marxist theory.

This intellectual ferment was tragically interrupted by the military coup of 1964, which initiated a twenty-year dictatorship. While repression forced many scholars into exile, the regime paradoxically funded a dramatic expansion of the federal university system. This diaspora enriched historical writing abroad, while at home, academia began reflecting global turns toward social and economic history. Research increasingly focused on labour history, slavery studies, and the lives of women, natives, and marginalized groups, as seen in the work of scholars like Emilia Viotti da Costa.

The most significant theoretical current during the dictatorship was dependency theory. Its most influential work, Dependency and Development (1969), was co-authored by exiled Brazilian sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This framework argued that Latin American underdevelopment was structurally caused by the region's economic and political domination by North Atlantic powers. Historical writing, such as Fernando Novais’s work on the colonial crisis, was deeply shaped by this perspective, seeking to place Brazil within a global world-system of exploitation.

Concurrently, rigorous quantitative economic history advanced, exemplified by Annibal Villela and Wilson Suzigan’s landmark study on government policy and growth (1973). The cross-fertilization of ideas, aided by the expansion of doctoral programs and international exchange, produced outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship. Brazilian historians made globally influential contributions, particularly in slavery and race relations, with scholars like João José Reis and Kátia de Queirós Mattoso challenging earlier benign views like those of Gilberto Freyre.

Intellectual and cultural history also flourished, evolving from its essayistic roots into rigorous academic analysis. Carlos Guilherme Mota’s Ideologia da Cultura Brasileira (1978) is a prime example, offering a synthetic analysis of the intelligentsia from Vargas to the military regime. The expansion of federal universities across every state by the 1980s, alongside centers of excellence like Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and Universidade Estadual de Campinas, democratized and professionalized the historical field. This institutional maturation, born from a complex interplay of elite projects, political repression, and theoretical innovation, secured Brazilian historiography's vital role in critically analyzing the nation's past and present.