The Colonial Brazil during the Phillipine age: historiographical approaches, research possibilities

Abstract

The article presents a historiographical analisys of Brazilian studies on the Brazil’s colonization during the Philippine age (1580-1640). Examines the brazilian historical bibliography since the work of Varnhagen, in the nineteenth century, until the recent university research, including the approaches of this period in the classic works on the our Colonial History. The issues raised by historiography are also analysed in regard on new possibilities of research based on archivistic sources little explored. The article sustains, at last, that the Philippine period was a turning point in the Colonial Brazil’s History in several matters. It highlights, on this way, the increase of the administrative control; the frontiers expansion to the north and to the south; the strengthening of Catholicism and, finally, the stricter enforcement of commercial monopoly, the main gear of the Ancient Colonial System