Abstract:
This paper covers the paths on land and rivers that crisscrossed and joined throughout the area of “Paulistânia”, forming a complex system of transportation routes. The theme was exhaustively addressed by the Brazilian author Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in three of his works as a historian: Monções, Caminhos e fronteiras and Capítulos de expansão paulista. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the essentiality of Holanda’s works for the historiographical research on the introduction and development of transports first in the Captaincy and then in the Province of São Paulo. By the analysis of such works, we conclude that, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a gradual evolution of the transport modalities in the South-Central Region of the country that went from the entrapment and descents of indigenous until the advent of railroads, passing by the “monções” of settlement and troops of mules.
Keywords:
Means of transport; Sérgio Buarque de Holanda; São Paulo