At this same academic session, Amaral promised that if his Projecto [Project] was approved, he would immediately present the Plano [Plan] he intended to follow. It will be, he says, a Civil History, but one cannot do without giving an idea of the state of the nation in each era, in terms of religion and the forces of both militia and trade, which, ‘because they are the lifeblood of the State, are the subject of many Rules of Public Law’. In addition to being an expert in legal history, ACA will therefore be, as Alexandre Herculano recognises, and as far as the Middle Ages are concerned, the founder of the social history of the Portuguese people ( Opúsculos ) [Opuscules] . Amaral ’ s ‘Plano’ [‘Plan’] divides his work into epochs and, as the History he does is above all that of the Monarchy, the first epochs will be like an ‘Introduction’ comprising four stages : pre-Roman Lusitania, the Roman period, the Barbarian period and the Arab period. At the time of Count D. Henrique’s marriage and the beginning of his conquests, History will finally begin , and this first part of History will last until the end of D. Fernando’s reign; another period will last until the reign of D. Sebastião ; the 3 rd period will begin in the Philippine period and end in the author ’ s own time.

Plano da História Civil also presents the method to be used in th is work in progress. As for the method, he says that he will not make a ‘positive history’, accumulating documents, because in that case , ‘he would not be writing History; he would be bringing evidence for it’, but also, at the opposite extreme, that he will not make ‘an abstract Discourse’. And he concludes: ‘Threatened by these two extremes, I thought that I would follow a rational path, leading a straightforward discourse, but always keeping to the historical memories that produced it, showing readers the connection between things’. Therefore, a rational and explanatory history, full of references to original documents, but in notes where readers can understand the nature of things ( Plano … , [Plan] p. 510). If he applied ‘judicious criticism’ to the sources, if he sought the means to ‘enter into the spirit of ancient times, and not interpret them by present ideas’, if he spoke ‘the truth’ – his fellow members would judge him in due course and the readers would make ‘their own judgements’. Submitting one ’ s work to the criticism of one ’ s peers and contributing with it to the ‘truth’ in an ideal of collective work was one of the major contributions of these modern Academies.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | (Pdf)