Caio da Silva Prado Júnior (February 11, 1907 – November 23, 1990) was a Brazilian historian, geographer, writer, philosopher and politician.

His works inaugurated a new historiographic tradition in Brazil, identified with Marxism, which led to new interpretations of the Brazilian colonial society.

[citation needed] After a trip to the Soviet Union, at the time under Stalin's dictatorship, he published URSS - um novo mundo (Soviet Union - a New World), which was banned by Getúlio Vargas' government's censorship.

He then joined the Aliança Nacional Libertadora which he chaired in São Paulo.

[citation needed] In 1942 he published the classic Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo - Colônia (Formation of Contemporary Brazil - Colony), which should have been the first part of a work on Brazilian historic evolution.