Richard Morse y la formación de la metrópoli latinoamericana: una tesis sobre la ciudad de San Pablo (1947-1970)

Abstract

In 1954, during the celebration of the fourth centenary of the foundation of São Paulo, the American historian Richard Morse launched his book on the history of the city, De comunidade à metrópole: a biografia de São Paulo. In dialogue with the School of Chicago and the American cities’ biographies, the work was the result of his doctoral thesis at Columbia University two years earlier. However, it also owed much to the author’s meeting with a generation of São Paulo intellectuals who in those years emerged as the most prominent critics of Brazilian culture, teachers of the newly founded Univer-sity of São Paulo – notably including Antonio Candido. When the work was republished in 1970 as Formação histórica de São Paulo: de comunidade à metrópole, in a collection edited by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the new title revealed the dialogue built and maintained over those years with that generation, explaining the new place of the book in the historiography of São Paulo. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the story of this work, following the trajectory of its author for more than two decades between his thesis on the colonial years of São Paulo, in 1947, “São Paulo: The Early Years” – a work that introduced him to a São Paulo historiography – and the reissue of his book in 1970. During those years, Morse became a professor of Latin American history at Yale University. The goal here is to shed light on the history of this classic work, highlighting dialogues, references, readings and partnerships, to contribute to the historiography of the city of São Paulo.