Historiographic crossings: from the History of Ideas to the contributions of Intellectual History and Conceptual History to the study of nineteenth-century Uruguayan political processes

Abstract

This article intends to analyze the epistemological changes that Uruguayan historiography underwent over the last two decades, more specifically, those that concern the study of the political-intellectual and conceptual processes of nineteenth century Uruguay. This article is thus divided into two parts. In the first, we will deal with the traditional History of Ideas from the mid-twentieth century in Latin America and, mainly, in Uruguay, and the theoretical and methodological renewal that took place in this field, from the broader assumptions of the so-called “New” Intellectual History. The second part will address how this reformulation has been mobilized, together with Conceptual History, by recent Uruguayan historiography, as a consistent and fruitful contribution to the analysis of the country’s nineteenth-century political-intellectual processes in view of the traditional History of Ideas, thus providing new perspectives, hypotheses and debates about the period in question.