Born in Rio de Janeiro to an American father and an English mother. Marchant completed his bachelor's degree at the National University in 1931, his master's degree at the American University in 1933 , and his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1941. He then worked at the State Department as an assistant researcher in Geography between 1940 and 1947. He also worked for the US embassy in Rio de Janeiro between 1945 and 1947. In 1948 he returned to the university as an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, where he spent his entire career focused on History, especially that of Brazil, and then retired as professor emeritus in 1978. He was one of the pioneers of Brazilian studies in the United States.

At the age of 30, he published his best-known work: From Barter to Slavery: Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500-1580 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944). The book was translated immediately into Portuguese and published in the prestigious Coleção Brasiliana of Companhia Editora Nacional in 1943 and reissued in the same collection in 1980. Shortly before, in 1938, he had published a bibliography on German colonisation in Brazil entitled "Writings in English, French, Italian and Portuguese Concerning the German Colonies in Southern Brazil" in the Handbook of Latin American Studies (1938). During his time at the State Department, he published a study on the borders between the American republics, entitled Boundaries of the Latin American Republics (1942 and 1944). During this period he also wrote three articles on Luso-Brazilian history: "Colonial Brazil as a Way Station for the Portuguese India Fleets" ( The Geographical Review , 1941); "Tiradentes in the Conspiracy of Minas" ( The Hispanic American History Review , 1941) , and the important text "Feudal and Capitalistic Elements in the Portuguese Settlement of Brazil" ( The Hispanic American... , 1942).

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