For guidance to archival collections for sixteenth-(and seventeenth-) century Brazil the best point of departure is the bibliographical appendix in Frédéric Mauro, Le Portugal, le Brésil, et l’Atlantique au XVIIe siècle (1570-1670): Etude Economique (Paris, 1983), originally published in 1960 under a slightly different title. Important sources have been transcribed and published as appendices to the various chapters of Carlos Malheiro Dias (ed.), História da colonização portuguêsa do Brasil, 3 vols. (Porto, 1921–4). Additional source material can likewise be found scattered throughout the Anais da Biblioteca National do Rio dė Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1876–) and the volumes of the series Documentos historicos (Rio de Janeiro, 1928–) published by the same institution. Documentos históricos (Rio de Janeiro, 1928–) published by the same institution. Many relevant documents have also been transcribed in the volumes of As gavetas da Torre do Tombo, 12 vols. to date (Lisbon, 1960–).

Standard accounts of Brazilian history that include treatment of the sixteenth century are Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen’s nineteenth century (1857) classic (enriched with notes by João Capistrano de Abreu and Rodolfo Garcia): História geral do Brasil, 5 vols., 9th ed. (São Paulo, 1975); Capistrano de Abreu’s classic, Capítulos de história colonial, 4th ed. (Rio de Janeiro, 1954); História da colonização portuguêsa do Brasil edited by Carlos Malheiro Dias (cited above), a collaborative work on the period to 1580 that reflects the best Portuguese scholarship of its generation; Pedro Calmon, História do Brasil, 7 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1959); and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (ed.), História geral da civilização brasileira, I: A época colonial, 2 vols. (São Paulo, 1960).