FROM THE MEANING OF COLONIZATION TO COLONIAL CURRENCY: ILMAR READER OF CAIO PRADO JR

Abstract

This text aims to analyze how Caio Prado Junior was captured by historian Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos in his work O Tempo Saquarema, exploring his contributions and how Prado Jr.’s “sense of colonization” was configured in the dual process analyzed by Mattos, that of the formation of the lordly class and that of the construction of the Imperial State. Both processes were operated by the Saquaremas, a political group associated with the Conservative Party, circumscribed in the surroundings of the Paraíba Valley and linked to the coffee agro-export sectors. We will see that the “sense of colonization” ended up also being the “sense of empire”, so that the aspects of permanence of colonial structures set the tone for Saquarema action in the attempt to secure their monopolies. Just as the understanding and analysis of the political and social processes of 19th-century Brazil was based on much of what was explained in O Tempo Saquarema, for Mattos' understanding of the Brazilian nineteenth century, Prado Jr.'s studies on the so-called colonial period were fundamental to its articulation.