Sobre a interpretação econômica da história em Gilberto Freyre (1933-1956)

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the relationship between economics and history in the work of Gilberto Freyre, particularly in The Masters and the Slaves and The Mansions and the Shanties. During his studies at Columbia University in the 1920s, the author came into contact with the American New History. Similar to the Annales movement in France, it proposed a new way of thinking History, different from 19th century historiography, which claimed to be scientific in the same sense of any other science. Influenced by Barnes and Seligman, both his professors at Columbia, Gilberto Freyre conceived Brazilian social formation as based on the patriarchy, a category he used as a criterion of periodization. The development and decay of rural patriarchy were analyzed from the viewpoint of its materiality - architectural forms, food diets, clothing, furniture, ecology - making for a very unique vision of Brazilian history, understood by Freyre as an economic interpretation of history.