The societies more developed economically, under NEI'S hypothesis, were the ones that created the institutions that more reduced transaction costs. The present work intends to evaluate if the classic works of our historiography on the colonial period can be read with advantage on the light of the neo-institucionalists recent contributions. Several interesting subjects are underlined in that new reading. One of them is it would have been the colonial enterprise and the institutions that it created, and that will influence the whole subsequent history of Brazil, a work of individuals moved by the own interest, that constitute a peculiar society in the new world. Or a "business of the king", that produced in Brazil a society without cohesion and deprived of own project, which, even after the independence, will not have institutional vigor to constitute a government different from the Portuguese monarchy.
new institutional economics; Brazilian economic history; Brazilian colony period; classic works