The historiography of the Portuguese empire in the 1960s: institutional frames and projections

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to provide an evaluation of the historiography on the Portuguese empire as produced in Portugal in the twentieth century. I seek to develop two specific lines of reasoning. On the one hand, I affirm that since the 1960s, the academia tended to monopolize the Portuguese intellectual arena and to establish itself as the center of the historiography on the overseas empire, and, in particular, on the subject of overseas expansion. On the other, I intend to reflect on this institutionalization of knowledge production and on how this process eventually built a knowledge of the past that was not produced independently, but rather subordinated to agendas and political connotations that have shaped the clipping and selection of sources, as well as the constitution of different topics and approaches.