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History and Theory, Theme Issue 53 (December 2015), 84-104 © Wesleyan University 2015 ISSN: 0018-2656DOI: 10.1111/hith.10780

BRAZILIAN HISTORICAL WRITING IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE:ON THE EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF “HISTORIOGRAPHY”

MATEUS HENRIQUE DE FARIA PEREIRA, PEDRO AFONSO CRISTOVÃODOS SANTOS, AND THIAGO LIMA NICODEMO1

ABSTRACT

This article assesses the meanings of the term “historiography” in Brazilian historiographyfrom the late nineteenth century to circa 1950, suggesting that its use plays an essential rolein the process of the disciplinarization and legitimation of history as a discipline. The glob-al-scale comparison, taking into consideration occurrences of the term in German, Spanish,and French, reveals that use of the term took place simultaneously worldwide. The term“historiography” underwent a signicant change globally, having become independent

from the modern concept of history, shifting away from the political and social dimen-sions of the writing of history in the nineteenth century and unfolding into a metacriticalconcept. Such a process enables historians to technically distinguish at least three semanticmodulations of the term: 1. history as a living experience; 2. the writing or narration of

history; and 3. the critical study of historical narratives. Based on the Brazilian experience,it is possible to think of the “historiography” category as an index of the transformationsof the modern concept of history itself between the 1870s and 1940s, a period of intensemodication of the experience and expectations of the writing of professional historical

scholarship on a global scale.

Keywords: history of historiography, Brazilian historiography, global history, profession-alization, institutionalization, theory of history, conceptual history, peripheral modernity

We intend here to assess the use of the term “historiograa” (historiography, in

Portuguese) in the work of Brazilian historians from the late nineteenth centuryto circa 1950. This time period is crucial for the institutionalization and profes-sionalization of history in Brazil, for it is precisely when the transition from the Instituto Histórico e Geográco Brasileiro (founded in 1838) to the universitytook place—the leading institutions in terms of historical production in Brazil inthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In broad terms, it is clear that the crys-tallization of the use of the term “historiography” occurred side by side withthe development of history as a university course, which took place in Brazilbeginning in 1934, with the foundation of the University of São Paulo and subse-

quent establishment of the University of the Federal District (in Rio de Janeiro,

1. Acknowledgments: Valdei Araujo, Fernando Nicolazzi, Andre de Lemos Freixo, Marieta deMoraes Ferreira, Henrique Estrada, Rebeca Gontijo, Sérgio da Mata, Fábio Faversani, Paulo Iumatti,Lúcia Paschoal Guimarães, Lúcia Bastos Neves, and Christina Rostworowski da Costa. NúcleoHistória da Historiografia e Modernidade (NEHM/UFOP), PRONEM/FAPEMIG, FAPEMIG,FAPESP, FAPERJ, CAPES, CNPq.


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BRAZILIAN HISTORICAL WRITING IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 85

Brazil’s capital at the time), in 1935. It is nevertheless worth mentioning that thefoundation of the universities did not radically change the meanings attributedto the term, for Brazil’s university culture took years to fully develop: graduateprograms and research support institutions were organized only throughout thedecades of 1940–1980.

This article suggests that the dynamic of the term “historiography” in the Bra-zilian context may not only lead to further understanding of Brazilian histori-ography itself as a eld of research, but also clarify the relationship with other

contemporary contexts transnationally. Recently developed technological toolssuch as Google Ngram Viewer have offered a broader perspective on the issue.The tool maps the occurrence of words in a database comprised of over eight mil-lion Google-digitized books, thereby offering an indication of how often the word“historiography” was used in different languages in past centuries. Specically

in relation to Portuguese (which was not included in the Google Ngram Viewerdatabase) and Spanish, this article will further rely on the number of times “histo-riography” was used in dictionaries, which occurred beginning in the nineteenthcentury.

Considering the abovementioned specics of the Brazilian case, that is, the

diffusion of the concept of historiography during the period in which universitiesand the history courses offered therein were established in the country, this articlequestions whether the concept might have mediated, or even regulated, a newexperience of historical knowledge. This experience would lie within a realisticconception of history, but would not discard the previous tradition of historicalwriting in Brazil. In that sense, the term “historiography” would also be appropri-ate to dene a disciplinary tradition, an important step toward legitimizing history

as an academic discipline. The expression “history of historiography” could thusbe used to validate contemporary practices by relating them to the writings ofgreat historians of the past, nevertheless marking the distance (similar to a gameof nearing to and departing2) between the moments, to then establish the distinc-tion between history practiced at universities from that of the institutions andindividuals of the past. As will be demonstrated below, the category implies threelevels of differentiation, the rst being history itself as an experience, the second,

the writing of history, and the third, study or reection on narrated history.

As has been explained by Reinhart Koselleck, the concept of history (Geschich-te) underwent denitive mutations in German beginning in the mid-eighteenthcentury.3 One could be led into believing that the association between the term“historiography” and the process of disciplinarization of history occurred almosttwo hundred years ago in Europe, and therefore late and peripherally in Brazil.However, according to G. Padilla, J. P. G. Pimenta, and V. L. de Araujo, concerningthe “experience of time,” the afrmation of the concept of history (as Geschichte)in Latin America closely followed the German process, having occurred in the rst

half of the nineteenth century, led by the political experience of independence on

2. Mark Salber Phillips. Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Great Britain,1740–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

3. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2004), 33-36.


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PEREIRA, CRISTOVÃO DOS SANTOS, AND NICODEMO86

the continent, which opened the way for a new space for the experience of moder-nity.4 Working with the model of history as “Geschichte” inevitably implies havingthe German standard of historical science as its premise, as well as the spread andreuse of history as “Geschichte” on a global scale.

As Georg Iggers has explained in A Global History of Historiography, the mis-sion of a global history is in fact to determine the interactions produced thanksto the spread of the modern historiography standard and the creative adaptationthereof.5 It is nevertheless necessary to relativize the notion of strict relations of“inuence” between center and periphery in modernity, thus furthering the un-derstanding of subaltern experiences. Attention is not focused exclusively on the“creative adaptation” of Western concepts of history, but on how historical experi-ence itself undergoes substantial changes. On this matter, it is worth mentioningthat the modern experience of history was modeled by contact with the “other,”whether “Western” and/or “Eastern.”

One must consider that the appropriation of Koselleck’s categories in LatinAmerican historiographies was just a fragment of a wider debate on the nature ofthe peripheral experience of modernity: in other words, how bourgeois and liberalvalues spread throughout the New World. This research timeframe overlaps a pe-riod of crystallization of the idea of modernity, modernization, and industrializa-tion in Brazilian public debate, leveraged by historical events such the abolitionof slavery (1888) and the fall of the Monarchy (1889).6 Together with these twoevents, it is necessary to take into account the contribution of capital stemmingfrom the sale of coffee and the hypertrophy of urban centers, especially of the cityof Rio de Janeiro.7

History was probably the most important medium for the debate on moderniza-tion since the main condition for modernity is to deal with the colonial past itselfas a synonym for archaism. At this point, the modern concept of history reachesits systemic and mature form, anchoring public opinion. The archaic heritage ofthe colonial past had to be identied, studied, and defeated in order to open space

for the new outcome. It is thus possible to speak of a programmatic use of thepast, of a certain space of experiences, nevertheless marked by a highly projective

4. Cf. Guillermo Zermeño Padilla, “História, experiência e modernidade na América Ibérica,1750–1850,” Almanack Braziliense, no. 7 (2008), 5-46. João Paulo Garrido Pimenta and ValdeiLopes de Araujo, Verbete “História,” in Léxico da história dos conceitos políticos do Brasil, ed. JoãoFeres Júnior (Belo Horizonte: Ed UFMG, 2009). See also Javier Fernández Sebastián, Diccionario político y social del mundo iberoamericano: La era de las revoluciones, 1750–1850, vol. I (Madrid:Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2009).

5. Georg G. Iggers, Q. E. Wang, and Supriya Mukherjee, A Global History of Modern Historiog-raphy (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2008), 5-7.

6. See Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s 1936 essay Raízes do Brasil [ Roots of Brazil] (Notre Dame,IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012); Antonio Candido, Formação da Literatura Brasileira [1959] (Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Itatiaia Limitada, 1975); Roberto Swartz, “As ideias

fora do lugar,” Estudos CEBRAP no. 3 (1973); English translation: Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Bra- zilian Culture (London: Verso, 1992); Francisco G. Sousa, “Revolta e proclamação como moldurasda história: escrita da história e olhares para a República entre os sócios do IHGB,” História da His-toriografia, 18 (2015), 213-230; and Angela Alonso, Idéias em movimento: a geração 1870 na crisedo Brasil-Império (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002).

7. Nicolau Sevcenko, Literatura Como Missão: Tensões Sociais e Criação Cultural Na Primeira República (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983).


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horizon of expectations on Brazil.8 In addition to the heated press debate in whichsuch discussions are shaped and therefore become tangible, there is a given typeof “social essay,” a hybrid form that blends politics, aesthetics, and social sciencesthat is not only typical of Brazil, but is in clear dialogue with the Latin Americanthought of the period.9

THE CONCEPT OF “HISTORIOGRAPHY” ON A GLOBAL SCALE

The assessment enabled by the Google tool within a wide historical time frame(from 1700 to 2008) shows a worldwide simultaneity of the incidence of the term“historiography,” which became consistently used only in the twentieth century,and especially between 1930 and 1950, a time span that coincides with the devel-opment of Brazilian scholarship in the university. Until circa 1850, the use of theterm is near zero, having signicant growth between 1850 and 1890.10

In Spanish, in turn, the “historiografía” curve has nonrecurring signicant vari-ations: peaks (though not very high) from 1720 to 1750, and from 1820 to 1830,with greater growth in books in the 1890s, having also peaked in results circa1940.

Despite certain oscillations, “Historiographie,” in French, and “Historiogra-phy,” in English, also have a similar ascending curve when compared to the useof the term in Spanish.

8. Thiago Lima Nicodemo, Urdidura do vivido: Visão do Paraíso e a obra de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda nos anos 1950 (São Paulo: Edusp, 2008), 23-46; 161-195.

9. See, among others, Roberto Ventura, Estilo Tropical (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1991).10. Research conducted in January 2015.


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This article is not focused on the detailed assessment of the specicities of the

historiographical traditions brought forth by the graphs. Such an assessment callsfor additional care in the use of the Google Ngram tool, specically with regard

to the prior and thorough analysis of the sources the tool uses in each case. Thiswould imply the previous investigation of the material Google uses as its base, toreect upon the circulation of the books, authors, publishers, and other cultural

mediators. Moreover, it would also involve a debate on material data the graphsreveal. For instance, one could mention the drop in the use of the term “histori-ographie” in the French context of the 1940s, which is probably a result of theadvent of World War II, and not necessarily of a systemic drop in the use of theterm itself.11

Below is the graph of the use of the term “historiography” in English:

It seems that in all cases seen thus far (Spanish, English, and French), thecurves strongly ascend from the 1940s–1950s and 1980s;12 the charts also reveala drop in the last decade of the past century. The exception to such general trends

11. About the uses and limitation of the Google Ngram Viewer, see Yuri Lin, “Syntactic Anno-tations for for the Google Books Ngrams Corpus, 2012, http://www.anthology.aclweb.org/P/P12/P12-3029.pdf (accessed October 26, 2015); and Chris Gratien and Daniel Portillo, “Google Ngram:An Intro for Historians,” http://hazine.info/google-ngram-for-historians/ (accessed October 26, 2015).Google offers the following service: http://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv2.html (accessed October 26, 2015) for researchers to organize their own databases (or corpora),

always updated as the scanning process develops, for large-scale and thus more systematic and refinedanalyses.12. On this matter, it is worth recalling the considerations of Pierre Nora, who saw a sign of

separation of memory in the very movement of history toward reflecting about itself, which tookplace precisely in the late 1970s and early 1980s: “Un des signes les plus tangible de cet arrache-ment de l’histoire à la mémoire est peut-être le début d’une histoire, de l’histoire, l’éveil en France,tout récent, d’une conscience historiographique” (Pierre Nora, “Entre Mémoire et Histoire,” In Les Lieux de mémoire, volume 1, La République [Paris: Gallimard, 1984], xx). This article and the chartsincluded here reveal that albeit common to the entire twentieth century, this phenomenon reaches itszenith exactly when Pierre Nora was writing—at least if one assumes the Google figures are accu-rate. As such, Nora’s work may not be announcing the birth, but, quite to the contrary, the peak of atransnational phenomenon. The discussions of what “historiography” is immediately following the

foundation of the international publication Storia della Storiografia in 1982 further corroborates thisperspective. Cf., for instance, Charles-Oliver Carbonell, “Pour une histoire de l’historiographie,” Sto-ria della Storiografia 1 (1982), 7-25; and Lawrence D. Walker, “The History of Historical Researchand Writing Viewed as a Branch of the History of Science,” Storia della Storiografia 2 (1982), 102-107; Milica Vasievna Netchkina, “L’histoire de l’historiographie: Problèmes méthodologiques del’histoire de la science historique,” Storia della Storiografia 2 (1982), 108-111 (both texts refer to thesection on the “discussioni”: “qu’est-ce que l’histoire de l’historiographie?”).


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may be seen in the use of the German term Geschichtsschreibung: the term has anongoing growth curve since 1830, further increasing beginning in 1930, thoughalso rising during the post-World War II period. In German, Historiographie-geschichte is related to the “history of historiography” course, whereas Geschich-tsschreibung is the subject matter thereof. Along the same lines, it is interestingto see that the curve of the term Historiographiegeschichte is quite similar to thatof the term “historiography” in the other research languages with regard to thesubstantial growth seen in the 1980s.

If the number of results of the word “history” in all researched languages iscompared to that of the word “historiography,” it is clear that the use of the word“history” is a transnational phenomenon of the transition from the eighteenth tothe nineteenth century, whereas the use of the word “historiography” is a twenti-eth-century phenomenon. It is noteworthy that the graphs for the word “history”generally conrm Koselleck’s hypothesis on the emergence, from approximately

1750–1850, of a new experience of history and/or time and a new/modern conceptof history.

Below is the chart of the use of the word “history” in French:


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It is clear that there is a similar rising curve from 1780 to 1800, and, in bothcases, the number of occurrences drops between 1820 and 1840, becoming steadyfrom the lowest point reached in the period (1820–1840). And now, the use of theword “history” in English:

Next, the use of the word “history” in Spanish (including variations in the useof capital letters):

Finally, use of the word “Geschichte,” in German:

The upward growth of use of the word “historiography” in the twentieth cen-tury, present in all the languages assessed here, may be attributed to the rise inuniversity production in the same century, among other factors. As a result, suchdata reveals some sort of synchrony between what is assumed as “center” and“periphery,” therefore leading one to the hypothesis that the use of the term “his-toriography” is in fact related to a process of modernization and professionaliza-tion of historical scholarship in the twentieth century.


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Based on the well-known literature on the professionalization of historical schol-arship, such as the works of Georg Iggers,13 Pim den Boer,14 and Peter Novick,15 among others, the phenomenon of professionalization and disciplinarization ofhistorical scholarship may be understood by taking into consideration: 1. the dia-logue of history with the other social sciences in the process of disciplinarizationin the second half of the nineteenth century, especially sociology, anthropology,and social psychology; 2. criticism of anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism, anessential part of modernist culture since the late nineteenth century and expand-ing over the twentieth century amid the traumatic experience of two world wars;3. the pursuit of transnational and anti-nationalistic models, concepts, researchtime-frames, and topics; and 4. a metacritical turn of history, which begins withthe resistance to nationalist models of narration (such as the “histoire événemen-tielle,” in France) and leads to issues such as the linguistic turn, in addition toseveral other debates over the twentieth century.

During the rst half of the twentieth century in Brazil, at least with regard to

the language of professional and academic historians, the word “historiography”eventually encompassed different meanings in relation to the concept of history,leaving aside the political dimensions directly associated with the national stateand embedded in the modern concept of history. Though historiography refers tothe collective singular of history, it eventually becomes a unique event or a uni-versal relation of events, in Koselleck’s terms.16 The category implies three levelsof differentiation: rst, history itself as an experience; second, the writing of his-tory; and third, study or reection about narrated history. Thus, it complicates the

very concept of history and also radicalizes its scientic implications. At least in

the Romance languages, the “historiography” category therefore opens up a newspace of experience, to wit: “scientic,” professional, and academic history.17

A CONCEPT OF “BRAZILIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY”

One of the most signicant features of Brazilian historiography is that the process-es of academic disciplinarization and professionalization did not happen simulta-neously. Marieta de Moraes Ferreira recalls that the academic professionalization

13. Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to thePostmodern Challenge (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005); Turning Points in His-toriography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers (Martlesham,UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2002).

14. Pim den Boer, History as a Profession: The Study of History in France, 1818–1914 (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1998).

15. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American HistoricalProfession (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

16. Koselleck, Futures Past , 32.17. It is important to notice, as Valdei Lopes de Araujo has pointed out, that the absence of the

word does not mean the absence of a practice of historiographical reflection, as may already be seenin the beginning of the nineteenth century: Valdei Lopes de Araujo, “Cairu e a emergência da cons-ciência historiográfica no Brasil (1808–1830),” in Estudos de historiografia brasileira, ed. MárciaDe Almeida Gonçalves, Rebeca Gontijo, Lucia Maria Paschoal Guimarães, and Lucia Maria BastosPereira Das Neves (Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2011); Márcia De Almeida Gonçalves, RebecaGontijo, Lucia Maria Paschoal Guimarães, and Lucia Maria Bastos Pereira Das Neves, Estudos dehistoriografia brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2011).


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process began in the 1930s, and the terms “professor” and “historian” had entirelydifferent meanings.18

Therefore, the transition between models of both writing and representing his-tory are concentrated in the years from 1890 to 1950. Synthesized in the nine-teenth century, the rst model presupposes national identity as the organizing

form of historical discourse.19 The producers of this knowledge were members ofthe imperial political elite, largely bound to the Brazilian History and GeographyInstitute ( Instituto Histórico e Geográco Brasileiro [IHGB]) and with no profes-sional background, but with disciplinary concerns and standards.20 In turn, thesecond model refers to duly professional writing of history, consolidated begin-ning in the 1930s with the establishment of university departments. As we willdiscuss further, one of the strongest characteristics of the transition period referredto herein is the rise of the discourse on disciplinary legitimacy, even prior to theexistence of university history courses.

At the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, writers such as FelisbeloFreire, Alcides Bezerra, and Capistrano de Abreu believed that historical knowl-edge is scientic in terms of objective representation, thanks to documentary re-search methods. They also believed that the critical method had to embrace theother social sciences in a critical dialogue. The words Alcides Bezerra used todescribe Sílvio Romero, a writer of the so-called 1870s generation,21 help denethe issue: “Historian, [Romero] went to the sources and conducted personal re-search, remembered names that had been forgotten, applied the ethnographic andsociological method to history, having considered, much like Taine, the inuences

of the environment, race, and foreign spiritual schools.”22

18. The author reveals that the first history programs were generally organized in order to trainteachers for basic education purposes, and also, to a lesser extent, to work in higher education. Assuch, these programs focused not on research but on teaching. In this context, historians were notnecessarily involved in teaching. According to Ferreira, this scenario only shifted with the organiza-tion of graduate programs in the 1970s: “as such, the ‘historian’ designation, which used to referexclusively to those who wrote about history, began encompassing those who have specific degrees,either for teaching or for research purposes” (Marieta de Moraes Ferreira, “O lado escuro da força: aditadura militar e o curso de história da Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia da Universidade do Brasil

(FNFi/UB)” História da historiografia, no. 11, [2013], 47. See also Marieta de Moraes Ferreira, A História como Ofício: A constituição de um campo disciplinar [Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2013]). To fur-ther understand the creation of the fields of study, see Qu’est-ce qu’une discipline?, ed. Jean Boutier,Jean-Claude Passeron, and Jacques Revel (Paris: EHESS, 2006).

19. See Manoel Luiz Salgado Guimarães, Historiografia e Nação no Brasil 1838–1857 (Rio deJaneiro: EdUERJ, 2011).

20. Lucia Maria Paschoal Guimarães, Da Escola Palatina ao Silogeu: Instituto Histórico e Geo-gráfico Brasileiro, 1889–1938 (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Museu da República, 2006). Also, aboutIHGB during Brazil’s first Republican period (1889–1930), see Angela de Castro Gomes, A Repúbli-ca, a história e o IHGB (Belo Horizonte: Argumentum, Fino Traço Editora, 2009).

21. The generation of authors who began publishing around 1870 was heavily influenced by posi-tivism and social evolutionism, especially Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and Hyppolite Taine,

among others. Capistrano de Abreu may be deemed part of this group in his early works, before hebroke away in favor of a more historicist approach. A comprehensive study of the generation is foundin Angela Alonso, Idéias em movimento: a geração 1870 na crise do Brasil-Império (São Paulo: Paze Terra, 2002).

22. Alcides Bezerra, Os historiadores do Brasil no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Oficinas Gráficasdo Arquivo Nacional, 1927). Bezerra was the director of the National Archives ( Arquivo Nacional)at the time of this publication.


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Though several intellectuals deserve to be highlighted in this transition pro-cess, special attention must be given to the Ceará-born historian who lived in Riode Janeiro, Capistrano de Abreu (1853–1927). A teacher at Liceu Dom Pedro II(then Brazil’s most important teaching institution), Capistrano is known for hisdocumentary rigor and review of the national history standards in Brazil, hav-ing furthered studies on the living conditions of natives and on the expansion ofBrazil’s frontiers to the west.23 His perspective on Brazilian history moved awayfrom political, military, and diplomatic events and toward the establishment of anautochthonous society that differed from Portuguese society, especially followinghis study of the occupation of Brazilian territory. Capistrano also devoted substan-tial work to research and document analysis as grounds to achieve solid historicalknowledge,24 having also been responsible for thorough editions of historical textsaimed at furthering research in the eld of history in Brazil.25

In fact, according to Capistrano, “historiography” refers to reection on the

narrated past, a term that he supplements with the reexive notion of “historical

studies,” whose subject matter is the Brazilian space since colonial times and itsinteractions with Europe.26 One of the writings that most clearly reveals the use ofthe term is the obituary Capistrano wrote for one of the founders of Brazilian his-toriography in the nineteenth century, Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen. In the text,Capistrano bemoans the fact that his predecessor was unaware of the set of “cre-ative doctrines” that, in recent years, had been referred to as “sociology.” “Havingno access to this beam of light, Varnhagen could not have seen how social lifedevelops. Without it, the relations that connect the successive moments of the lifeof a people could not have revealed themselves in their spirit in order to clarify thedifferent traces and elements, reciprocally.”27 Capistrano believed a theory wouldtherefore be necessary—in this case, sociological theory—to interpret the past in

23. He developed these topics in Capítulos de História do Brasil (1907, published in the UnitedStates as Chapters of Brazil’s Colonial History, 1500–1800 [New York: Oxford University Press,1997]) and Caminhos Antigos e o Povoamento do Brasil (1899).

24. In one of his most famous quotes, Capistrano claimed the history of Brazil (in other words,the narration of the Brazilian historical process) was similar to a “house built on sand,” for previous

studies were far from being grounded. These words are part of a letter written on May 17, 1920 toPortuguese historian João Lúcio de Azevedo (Correspondência de Capistrano de Abreu, volume 2,ed. with preface by José Honório Rodrigues, 2nd ed. [Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira; Brasília:INL, 1977], 161-162).

25. According to American historian Robert Conrad, Capistrano was the Brazilian version ofRanke: “Emotionally and methodically he [Capistrano] was a Brazilian Ranke, nationalistic, rarelycritical, devoted to the sources and the science of history.” Robert Conrad. “João Capistrano deAbreu, Brazilian Historian,” Revista de Historia de América 59 (1965), 162. An important studyabout Capistrano, which also deals with the image formed about him and the place he came to havein Brazilian historiography, is Rebeca Gontijo, O velho vaqueano Capistrano de Abreu (1853–1927): memória, historiografía e escrita de si (Rio de Janeiro: Sete Letras, 2013). Concerning Capistrano’scritical method and his editions of historical texts, see, respectively, Maria da Glória de Oliveira,

Crítica, método e escrita da história em João Capistrano de Abreu (Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora,2013); and Pedro Afonso Cristovão dos Santos, “História erudita e popular: edição de documentoshistóricos na obra de Capistrano de Abreu,” Master’s degree thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 2009.

26. João Capistrano de Abreu, “Necrológio de Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Visconde de PortoSeguro.” Originally published in Jornal do Commercio (December 16–20, 1878), and reprinted in Ensaios e Estudos: crítica e história, 1st series (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Briguiet, 1931).

27. Ibid ., 139.


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its uniqueness, expressed by means of the facts, or perhaps reveal its organic andnecessary “evolution.”

Capistrano actually suggests an agenda for the writers of historical studies ofhis time, which mixes elements of literary criticism (nationalism and empathy,for instance) with the defense of the use of sociology, thereby implying a notionof science marked by the drafting of laws and/or generalizations of broad reach.In what concerns the central issue addressed here, it is noteworthy that thanks tohis assessment of Varnhagen, Capistrano’s work stands out amid that of the otherwriters whose texts have, since the sixteenth century, had some sort of historio-graphical approach, and also shone a light on the debt contemporary historiansallegedly have to the Viscount of Porto Seguro. Capistrano acknowledges Varn-hagen’s place in the future as the person responsible for bringing together theelements to be used to build a scientic history of Brazil,28 backed by sociology.As such, his obituary reveals how Varnhagen’s work stands in relation to the past,present, and future of “historical studies” in Brazil. This last category thereforeembraces a unity not seen since the chroniclers of the rst decades of Portuguese

colonization in the sixteenth century, as in the case of Pero de Magalhães Gan-davo (1576) and Gabriel Soares de Souza (1582).

“Scientic” aspirations were not enough to build a legitimizing discourse to

dene “Brazilian historiography.” It was also necessary to rethink history-writing

itself in the nineteenth century, therefore pursuing the antecedents and ancestorsof such historiography. A contemporary of Capistrano de Abreu, historian AlcidesBezerra reects precisely on the “founding fathers” of a Brazilian historical sci-ence during a 1926 lecture on Brazilian historians of the nineteenth century. In-asmuch as Brazilian science was “subject to European science and history,”29 Be-zerra initially mentions three foreigners: “The rst person who studied Brazilian

history with a scientic spirit was the honorable English poet Robert Southey,”30 writer of a “History of Brazil” published in 1819. It would then be necessaryto take into account the contributions of German thinkers Karl von Martius andHeinrich Handelmann. According to Bezerra, “It fell to Handelmann to carry outMartius’s plan,” which resulted in the “best history of Brazil one has ever read.”31

Considering the aforementioned “context,” the following items will revealthat the use of the concept of “historiography” in Brazil was directly related tothe transition between the two models of historiographical production: the model

28. Among these elements, most notably, were several important documents discovered and editedby Varnhagen, largely in the course of his voyages as a member of the imperial diplomatic serviceof Brazil in the nineteenth century. His life in constant movement is studied in Temístocles Cezar,“Varnhagen em movimento: breve antologia de uma existência” Topoi 8, no. 15 (2007), 159-207.Much of Varnhagen’s notion of historical erudition and textual criticism actually came from the tradi-tion of the eighteenth-century Portuguese Enlightenment, as may be seen in Taíse Tatiana Quadrosda Silva, “A erudição ilustrada de Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1816–77) e a passagem da his-

toriografia das belas letras à história nacional: breve análise histórica,” in Estudos sobre a escrita dahistória, ed. Manoel Luiz Salgado Guimarães (Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, 2006), 114-138.

29. Bezerra, Os historiadores do Brasil no século XIX , 3.30. Ibid ., 4, emphasis added.31. Ibid ., 9. Martius’s plan to which Bezerra refers is the thesis “Como se deve escrever a história

do Brasil” (1844), or “How to Write a History of Brazil,” winner of the competition promoted byInstituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro on the topic.


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produced predominantly in the nineteenth century and based on the Braziliannation as the organizing structure of historical discourse; and the second model,which coincides with the sedimentation of university production, which contin-ues to have the nation as its central concern. Above all, the growth of the use ofthe term “historiography” in the period 1890–1950 reveals a desire to modernizehistory-writing and to develop a discourse of disciplinary legitimization evenbefore the establishment of the university.

SEMANTIC VARIATIONS AND THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF “HISTORIOGRAPHY”

According to Bezerra, the turning point in nineteenth-century historical produc-tion effectively took place in the rst half of the century, when the difference

between chronicler and historian became clearer in the Portuguese-Brazilian do-main.32 Grossly speaking, and much like in the works of Capistrano, Bezerra ana-lyzes historians according to criteria common to nineteenth-century literary criti-cism, so much so that though his assessments differ from a history of literature,it is not entirely dissociated from the criteria used in such writings of history.33

As has been previously mentioned, Google Ngram Viewer does not make dataavailable for the Portuguese language, but it is nonetheless possible to observethe history of the use of the term “historiograa” in Portuguese dictionaries. In

the rst edition of the most important Portuguese dictionary (up to the twentieth

century)—Moraes Silva’s dictionary of 1789—there is no entry for “Historio-graphia,” though there is an entry for “Historiógrapho,” meaning “Chronicler,Chronographer.” “Historiographia” was included only in the eighth edition

32. When assessing Brazilian historians of the first half of the nineteenth century, Bezerra men-tions the lack of scientific spirit in writers who allegedly were merely compilers. Bezerra beginshis analysis with the writers he classifies as “chroniclers,” namely José da Silva Lisboa (Viscountof Cairu), Baltazar Lisboa, José Feliciano Fernandes Pinheiro (Viscount of S. Leopoldo), InácioAccioli de Cerqueira, and Silva, among others. The main criticism of the chroniclers is the lack of“architecture” in their works, the poor organization of the material (the only exception being the História da Província de S. Pedro, which in fact was the Anais da Província de S. Pedro, of theViscount of S. Leopoldo). Brazilian “chroniclers,” if not mere compilers of other historians’ work,

copied most of the material available in the sources, having profusely transcribed documents in theirworks, which actually turned out to have been a good deed (after all, they facilitated access to sourcesand established certain facts), but did not make/write history. Hence, he claims, “let us give peaceto the chroniclers, who perhaps died in the illusion of having made history. Let us move on to thehistorians” (Bezerra, Os historiadores do Brasil no século XIX , 10). About the historiography of earlynineteenth-century Brazil, see Valdei Lopes de Araujo. “Formas de Ler e Aprender com a História noBrasil Joanino,” Acervo (Rio de Janeiro) 22, no. 1 (2009), 85-98, and Araujo, “Cairu e a emergênciada consciência historiográfica no Brasil (1808–1830).”

33. An example of this is when Bezerra refers to Euclides da Cunha, focusing on the convergenceof style, factual diligence, and giving form to the statement of facts. Os Sertões has a “vibrant and newstyle, which signalizes, which marks the study of the transformation of the Portuguese language into‘Brazilian’ Portuguese.” Bezerra, Os historiadores do Brasil no século XIX , 17. Os Sertões, a classic

work of Brazilian social thinking (first published in 1902), is based on the study of a popular revoltin the sertão, or hinterlands, located in northeast Brazil, in the first years of the Brazilian Republic(proclaimed in 1889), which thoroughly analyzed the region and Brazilian society of the time. Thework was translated into several languages, having first been published in the United States as Rebellion in the Backlands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945). Sociological in nature, OsSertões largely influenced historiography in Brazil as well, having been included as part of Brazilianhistoriography by the writers studied herein.


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(1891), dened as “Historiographia . . . The art of writing history.” Capistrano

de Abreu had already used the term shortly before in his 1888 edition of Históriado Brasil, written by Friar Vicente do Salvador (originally published in 1627). Inthe introduction, Capistrano claims that December 20, 1627, when Friar Vicentesigned his História, is “extremely important in our historiographia,” though thismay perhaps be the only time he used the term in his works. Shortly before that,in the 1887 edition of the same work, Capistrano had written that that day was“one of the greatest days in our colonial literature.” The “precocious” use of theterm is found in Martius’s work, “Como se deve escrever a história do Brasil”(“How to Write a History of Brazil”), published in 1844 by the Instituto Históricoe Geográco Brasileiro. This use possibly indicates that its use in German was

consolidated far earlier than in the Brazilian (or Lusophone) space, a fact that mayreveal its establishment as related to the disciplinarization of history, as we willargue next, although Martius’s text may be seen more in terms of a synthetic andromantic view, as Valdei Lopes de Araujo has observed. Martius used the termthree times, the most important of which for this study is: “The works that havebeen published so far on the provinces, individually, are of inestimable value. Im-portant facts are abundant in such works and actually thoroughly clarify severalevents; however, they do not meet the requirements of true historiography, forthey are largely marked by the spirit of chronicles.”34

“Historiographia” seems to have remained, in Moraes Silva’s dictionary, the“art of writing history” up to the twentieth century. The term is dened in the

tenth edition, published in 1945, as the “art, work of the historiographer,” thusintroducing it as also being a craft or occupation, and not only an art. It is there-fore clear that the use of the word “historiograa” in Portuguese is a phenomenon

essentially of the period of the texts assessed here (1878–1951). Since the term“historiógrapho” had been included since the rst edition of the dictionary, at least

as from the sixth edition, or since the mid-nineteenth century, the dictionary wasalready distinguishing between “historiógrapho” and “historiador” (historiogra-pher and historian) in the entry, terms that had been considered synonyms. Themain purpose of the explanation is to highlight that “historiógrapho” is closer to“chronista” (chronicler) than to “historiador.”

The afrmation of history as a science clearly was not the only pathway used

by Brazilian intellectuals. Pedro Lessa negatively addressed the issue, for in-stance, in his work É a historia uma sciencia? (1900) and in his inaugural speechat the IHGB, in 1907. Lessa believed history could only provide material for so-ciology, which was in fact a science. According to Alcides Bezerra, the issue thatdenes scientic status is not the formulation of laws for history (as Capistrano

believed in 1878), or broad generalizations. Producing reliable knowledge, ca-pable of prevailing even in political and diplomatic decisions, seems to guaranteethat which Bezerra understands as scientic. Bezerra had in mind the cases of

frontier disputes in which Brazil prevailed in international arbitration by using

34. Karl Friedrich Philipp Von Martius, “Como se deve escrever a história do Brasil,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 6 (1844), 399, emphasis added. The work is included inthe compilation of E. Bradford Burns, Perspectives on Brazilian History (New York: Columbia Uni-versity Press, 1967), which also includes the work of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, to be analyzed next.


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evidence arising out of historical research on the occupation of land and formerdiplomatic treaties.

In turn, Lessa uses the term “historiographia” as the writing of history. Apartfrom Lessa, Max Fleiuss (life-tenured secretary of IHGB in the early twentiethcentury) also uses the category, especially in the review of Historia de la His-toriografía Argentina (1925), written by Rómulo Carbia. Fleiuss’s statement onCarbia’s criticism of Argentine historians who were inuenced by sociology is

especially relevant for the issues discussed here. His censure falls essentially onthe development of interpretations of the Argentine past without any documentaryevidence, or with the seldom-critical use of the documents. Fleuiss transcribesCabria’s words, thus summarizing his argument: “It was about time to reactagainst such a process of supercial and ephemeral Historiography, which, based

on what many have decided to refer to as sociological interpretation, has providedfor a wide range of levities at the mercy of applause.” According to Fleiuss, Car-bia’s conception of history, primarily derived from the works of Benedetto Croce,understands history as “the intellectual revival of the past in the historian’s spirit,”or “resurrection,” in the words of Michelet,35 based on rigor in the use of the docu-ments in the work of historical rebuilding, in the Argentine thinker’s perspective.Fleuiss in turn believed that sociology would not be regarded in toto as a negativeinuence. The same edition of the IHGB publication features a quite positive

review Fleiuss wrote on Oliveira Vianna’s Pequenos estudos de psicologia social.It is worth mentioning that Romulo Carbia’s book was published in the same

year (1925) in which the word historiografía rst became part of the Spanishdictionary published by the Real Academia Española (RAE), then in its fteenth

edition. Other Spanish dictionaries had already featured the entry, at least sinceDominguez’s dictionary of 1853. The RAE lexicon in fact adopts the simpler de-nition of historiografía: “Arte de escribir la historia” (or art of writing history).Dominguez’s dictionary, in turn, added the following meaning: “que enseña losdiferentes métodos de escribirla” (or that which teaches the different methods ofwriting history). The 1855 edition of the Gaspar y Roig dictionary presents a mixof both notions: “arte que enseña los diferentes métodos de escribir la historia”(or art that teaches the different methods of writing history). The denition is

somewhat similar in the dictionaries preceding the fteenth edition of the RAE

dictionary, the only exception being the Alemany y Bolufer dictionary, publishedin 1917, which adds the following denition: “Bibliograa histórica” (or histori-cal bibliography). Hence, when Romulo Carbia wrote and published his book, heuses a concept of historiography that is dened in Spanish dictionaries as an art—

that of the writing of history—coupled with the teaching of different methodsfor the writing of history, a specic meaning that was not included in Portuguese

dictionaries.The case of Argentine Romulo Carbia further supports the hypothesis about

the association between the concept of historiograa and the institutionalizationand professionalization of history as a university course. Carbia was part of theso-called “Nueva Escuela Histórica” (or New Historical School) in Argentina,

35. Max Fleiuss, review of Rómulo Carbia, Historia de la Historiografía Argentina, Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 97, no. 151 (1925), 322.


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which prevailed in the rst decades of the twentieth century and played a role in

the professionalization of university-level historians in the country at the time.Argentina led the way in this process, when compared to the other Latin Ameri-can countries in the 1920s—especially if its South American neighbors are takeninto account.36 The new Argentine school spearheaded such professionalizationby advocating for a more scientic historiography, based on manuals such as that

written by Ernst Bernheim, according not only to the principles of German his-toricism but also largely inuenced by Benedetto Croce. The group concurrently

focused on its own writing of history—as Carbia himself did—using the conceptof historiography to dene this writing.

THE WRITING OF HISTORY AND UNIVERSITY PRODUCTION

Twenty-ve years after Fleuiss’s review of Historia de la Historiografía Argen-tina, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda also expressed his disagreement with sociologi-cal interpretations in “O Pensamento Histórico nos Últimos 50 anos.” It is worthmentioning that for Buarque, the problem of dening Brazilian historiography

was somewhat simpler when compared to the other writers assessed here. Be-cause of the purpose of his article, which was part of an overview of Brazilianculture in the rst half of the twentieth century developed by the newspaper Cor-reio da Manhã , Buarque began with the exclusion of the colonial period and thenineteenth century. In fact, the text denes the entire category of historical studies

as its subject matter: the entire production in the different areas of history, or thatuse history—or that reect upon history. One would therefore nd “historical

thinking” in the theoretical references rather than in the writer’s work or praxis.If works on history—monographic or general—or critical editions of docu-

ments easily fall under the subject matter of Buarque’s article (for they had beenpart of the denition of “history” since the previous generation), how should the

work of writers such as Oliveira Vianna37 and Gilberto Freyre38 be classied?

36. Juan Maiguashca, “Historians in Spanish South America: Cross-References between Centreand Periphery,” in Oxford History of Historical Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),

IV, 483.37. Oliveira Vianna was a sociologist who wrote important works on the interpretation of Braziliansociety, such as Populações meridionais do Brasil (1920). His work went through a phase of heavycriticism in the decade here considered, the 1950s (mostly due to his conservative political views), atthe same time that Capistrano de Abreu was being praised in the history of historiography analyzedherein. An assessment of this process and comparison between the two is found in Giselle MartinsVenancio and Ítala Byanca Morais da Silva, “Um tal João, um tal Francisco: disputas intelectuais emonumentalização da produção intelectual de Capistrano de Abreu e Oliveira Vianna nos anos 50,”in Contribuições à História da Historiografia Luso-Brasileira, ed. Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva, Fer-nando Nicolazzi, and Mateus Pereira (São Paulo: Hucitec/Belo Horizonte: Fapemig, 2013), 389-424.

38. Freyre penned a large bibliography and is especially known for the trilogy Casa-grande eSenzala, Sobrados e Mucambos, and Ordem e Progresso. The first work, published in 1933, received

the most attention and refers to the formation of Brazil’s patriarchal society. Translated into severallanguages, it was published in English as Masters and Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazil-ian Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946). Freyre was recently the subject of Peter Burkeand Maria Lúcia Garcia Pallares-Burke, Gilberto Freyre: Social Theory in the Tropics (Oxford: PeterLang, 2008). About Gilberto Freyre, Euclides da Cunha, and the tradition of ensaísmo in Brazil, seeFernando Nicolazzi, Um Estilo de História. A viagem, a memória, o ensaio: sobre Casa-grande &senzala e a representação do passado (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2011).


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There seems to be a variety of interfaces with stricto sensu historiographical pro-duction, which supports such inclusion. The “sociological studies” are part ofhistorical thought for “they have opened paths for a type of research our histori-ans had barely conducted.” More specically, Oliveira Vianna “[also] dedicated

himself [in his works] to essays on social and psychological history, inspired byfacts and personalities of the Brazilian Imperial Period.” Gilberto Freyre wrote“based on substantial historical material,” used his “extensive knowledge of therural past,” which, together with the theoretical contributions he included (suchas the methods of Franz Boas), “provided him with ideal perspectives to addressour historical formation.”39

In general, such interpretations of Brazilian history or of Brazilian societybased on its history could contribute to “a new direction to historical studies,”even if such interpretations were oftentimes “biased and even misrepresentedthe facts.” “Formation” studies deriving from the “usable past” to back politicalstands, as was the case of the integralismo movement in Brazil (a line of thoughtclose to fascism in the Brazilian political spectrum of the 1930s), however, “are,in general, barely of interest for historiographical research.”40 In this case, histo-riography is associated with research, when compared to the practices that twisthistorical facts to benet political theories.

Astrogildo Rodrigues de Mello, professor in the Department of History of theUniversity of São Paulo (USP), also published an article in 1951, when SérgioBuarque de Holanda published his work, suggesting a broad critical overview on“Os Estudos Históricos no Brasil.” His review does not take foreign writers intoaccount, but includes the colonial period in the denition of Brazil. The terms

“historical studies,” “history,” and “historiography” are used interchangeably.Mello aims at thinking about the writing of history of (and in) Brazil within

the historical process of the development of Brazilian culture. In his words, “theBrazilian historiographical issue actually provides very specic aspects whose

interpretation is rooted in clearly dened moments of Brazilian civilization.”41 Though Mello’s work uses general landmarks, he believes it is only possible tospeak effectively of a Brazilian historiography following Brazil’s independence,especially during the Second Empire, for only then would there actually be aBrazilian culture, arising out of the slow changes brought forth by the arrival ofthe Portuguese royal family in 1808. However, “the mid-nineteenth century marksthe embryonic phase of Brazilian historiography.”42 According to Mello, docu-mentary review (the “study of the sources”) is an incipient criterion inherent tohistoriography, thereby distinguishing it from intellectual production. The dawnof the Second Empire sees a new signicant moment of historiography.

It is worth mentioning that Mello included several footnotes in his article, withbibliographical references to the works he mentioned. Mello is the only writer of

39. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, “O Pensamento Histórico nos Últimos Cinquenta Anos,” in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda: Perspectivas, ed. João Kennedy Eugênio and Pedro Meira Monteiro (Campi-nas, SP: Editora da UNICAMP; Rio de Janeiro, RJ: EdUERJ, 2008), 610.

40. Ibid ., 611.41. Astrogildo Rodrigues de Mello, “Os Estudos Históricos no Brasil,” Revista de História no. 6

(1951), 381.42. Ibid ., 384-385, emphasis added.


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the history of the writing of history and not exclusively as the writing of history,would appear “independently,” so as to justify the choice of such texts.47 This isso because that which Rodrigues understands as “Brazilian historiography” hadalready been covered in the histories of Brazilian literature since the nineteenthcentury, as is the case, for instance, in the works of Sílvio Romero (1888) and JoséVeríssimo (1916), where “history” was included as part of the division of litera-ture, as a variety of prose. In fact, José Honório attempted to separate the historiesof literature from the study of historiography, for he claimed a formal and stylisticcriterion that prevailed in the former as opposed to an approach focused on thespecicities of the historical discipline.48

Astrogildo Rodrigues de Mello used the category of “Brazilian historiography”asthe main focus of his article. In turn, Capistrano used the term “historical studies,”which is also present in the works of Sérgio Buarque, and which is also the titleof Astrogildo’s article. Alcides Bezerra used the expression “historical science,”and insisted more than once on treating history as a science. However, it is clearthat all the texts ultimately reveal what is currently referred to as review and/oranalysis of the “state of the art” or “historiographical assessment.”

The four writers assessed here did not limit their activities to listing works andwriters, but actually analyze and categorize the production they discuss. In eachcase, such a process results in a type of ideal notion of what “Brazilian historiog-raphy” would effectively be, a compilation of indispensable characteristics anddefects to be avoided. “Brazilian historiography” therefore receives its meaningthrough the interpretation of texts produced on the “object” Brazil.

Dening the “content” of the category varies according to the authors and

the specicities of the context in which each text was written. For Capistrano

de Abreu (1878), “historical studies” refers to the authors of works with sometype of historiographical content, beginning in the colonial period, foreign writers

toriography based on a consideration of how the history of Brazil should be written. Considering thethree articles, in essence, the first one may be read as an assessment of the importance of Varnhagen’swork, together with everything that was still left to be done in Brazilian historiography; the secondarticle contains Capistrano’s outline of how Brazilian history should be understood, especially in whatconcerns the specificities of each period, in order to find its internal logic and the specific studies that

are still necessary to enlighten such logic; the third article, in general, is the most historiographicalin nature and includes a review of Varnhagen as a historian and an assessment of the main writersof historical studies in Brazil at that point, in addition to an optimistic report of the then-current situ-ation (in other words, of 1882). In fact, the category that Capistrano de Abreu used in these articlesis “historical studies” or “history of Brazil” (in the sense of producing knowledge on the Brazilianhistorical process), without mentioning the term “historiography.”

47. It is worth mentioning, as Andre de Lemos Freixo has pointed out, that Rodrigues wroteabout Brazilian historiography since the 1940s in several articles, and even publishing, in Mexico,by the Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, two volumes on Brazilian historiography ofthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in 1957 and 1963 respectively (both entitled Historiografíadel Brasil). As part of his efforts, Rodrigues also edited the correspondence and various writings ofCapistrano de Abreu.

48. Rodrigues was instrumental in the beginning of the study of the history of historiography inBrazil. About his work, see Raquel Glezer, “Fazer e o saber na obra de José Honório Rodrigues: ummodelo de análise historiográfica,” Doctoral thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 1977; Ana LuizaMarques. “José Honório Rodrigues: uma sistemática teórico-metodológica a serviço da história doBrasil,” Master’s thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Departamento de His-tória, 2000; and Andre de Lemos Freixo, “A arquitetura do novo: ciência e história da História doBrasil em José Honório Rodrigues,” Doctoral thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2012.


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being independent, as having singularities, led such writers to interpret and readthe representations of the national past with the eyes of history as a discipline,thereby thinking in terms of method, theory, and production of knowledge aboutthe past.

The recurring exchange between the terms “historical studies,” “historiogra-phy,” and “history” (and even theory) to refer broadly to the writing of historyand/or the history of historiography still exists in Brazil. (Although recently theeld of history of historiography has grown in such a way in Brazil that the useof the expression historiography in this sense has sharply declined.50) One maynonetheless infer that there has been a progressive abandonment of the expression“historical studies” in the development of studies on the history of historiography,replaced by the use of “history” or “historiography.” Far more than what may bean unrealistic requirement of coherence, one necessarily shines light on the “inac-curacies,” which nevertheless constitute the history of a subdiscipline (that is, thehistory of historiography) clearly undergoing the process of becoming indepen-dent and increasingly institutionalized.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: “HISTORIOGRAPHY” AND THE TRANSFORMATIONS OFTHE MODERN CONCEPT OF HISTORY ON A GLOBAL SCALE

The term “historiography” eventually absorbed different meanings of the conceptof history in the rst half of the twentieth century in Brazil, at least in the lexicon

of professional and university historians, leaving behind the political and social

dimensions of the modern concept of history. Even if historiography refers to thesingular collective noun “history,” it eventually gained its own independence. Ashas been argued here, this process likely refers to the attempt to break with formerwritings of history. The research conducted leads one to believe that the develop-ment of a specialized tradition, the outcome of several works on “historiography,”together with the semantic ambiguities of the historiography category, enables theeld of experience of historicity of historical production to promote (or at least to

render more accessible) the use of the expression history of historiography begin-ning in the 1950s/1960s. Based on the Brazilian experience, it is possible to for-

mulate the hypothesis according to which the category of historiography possiblytransformed itself as an indicator of the transformations of the modern concept ofhistory itself between the 1870s and the 1940s, a period of intense modication of

the experience and expectations of the writing of professional historical scholar-ship on a global scale.

It seems that the ambiguous but reexive category of historiography has since

become a sort of transcendental category aimed at the condition of possible his-tory, moreover, of the only possible writing of history: history written by profes-sionals with a university degree. The category has the advantage of not being

mistaken for the concept of history, for history itself, or for the experienced pro-cess. It therefore likely refers to a sophistication of the concept of history itself,as well as of the radicalization of the scientic purpose of such a concept. At least

50. See Valdei Lopes de Araujo, “Sobre o lugar da história da historiografia como disciplinaautônoma,” Locus (Juiz de Fora) 12, no. 1 (2006), 79-94.


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in the Romance languages, it seems that the “historiography” category thereforeprovides a new space of experience, to wit, professional and academic “scientic”

history. This is certainly the case in Brazil.Representations of the past built outside this logic could in fact be history, but

would they be historiography? It is nevertheless clear that the category of histori-ography will also not be able to solve the enigma of history, or solely of the past.On this matter, it is also necessary to take Koselleck’s considerations into account,when he mentions the “productive tension” between the history of concepts andsocial history; in other words, there will not always be an accurate conjunctionand synchronicity between a fact, or social praxis, and a concept to denote it.51

Is the process described herein a result of the furtherance of the modern conceptof history, to the extent to which history began being produced at the universi-ties? Or is it in fact part of a larger process of deation of the modern concept

of history, dened by certain scholars in the post-World War II period?52 Thesequestions deserve further investigation. One may nevertheless claim that the es-tablishment of the “Brazilian historiography” category must be understood 1. inview of a critical approach to the realistic conception of the concept of history;2. considering the self-legitimization and process of the discipline of history be-coming independent from the production of other institutions, such as IHGB andregional historical institutes (which were the prevailing loci of historiographicalproduction in the rst half of the twentieth century); 3. based on the construc -tion of a disciplinary “memory” or “tradition”; and 4. also in view of the need todistinguish history produced by the universities from the other representations ofthe past. It is possible that the broad acceptance of the category may be explainedby the fact that despite all the ambiguities, historiography is broader in terms ofresearch subjects of the subdiscipline (history of historiography), but it goes be-yond the “elds” themselves. Nevertheless, it is necessary to discuss whether the

category does not ultimately limit the study of the representations of the past to asingle type of writing: university production.

Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (Pereira)

Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (Cristovão dos Santos)

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Nicodemo)

51. Koselleck, Futures Past , 114. See also Reinhart Koselleck, “Espacio e Historia,” in Los estra-tos del tiempo (Barcelona: Paidós, 2001), 97-98.

52. Cf. François Hartog and his thoughts on presentism as the historicity regime that prevailedbeginning in the second half of the twentieth century, as is the case in “What is the Role of the His-torian in an Increasing Presentist World?,” in The New Ways of History: Developments in Historiog-raphy, ed. Gelina Harlaftis, Nikos Karapidakis, Kostas Sbonias, and Vaios Vaiopoulos (London andNew York: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 239-252.

Documents

Brazilian Historical Writing in Global P