In 1882 Arriaga was already collaborating on the Dicionário Universal Português, edited by Henrique Zeferino de Albuquerque, which was inspired by the Larousse. In the 1880s he contributed to many Republican newspapers, such as Era Nova, Folha do Povo and Democracia. In the last-mentioned he published various articles about Manuel Fernandes Tomás which he later brought together in his book on the revolution of 1820. In 1883 his signature appears under various articles on modern music, in a magazine of arts and letters called Perfis Artísticos, edited by Zacarias d’Aça. A new series, now called Perfis Literários e Artísticos, was then produced by Arriaga himself, with the aim of devoting itself to publicizing Portuguese arts and artists, as well as “national monuments”, in line with the cultural nationalism practised by intellectuals at the end of the century. Arriaga contributed to this aim with a biography of Machado de Castro and an article on the monument to D. José I. In total, six issues of the magazine were published.

In 1886, when he was 38 years old, he published his first serious work on contemporary history, História da Revolução Portuguesa de 1820, which was followed by his História da Revolução de Setembro (1892). In these two books Arriaga made a valuable contribution to the history of these two keys moments in the installation of Liberalism in Portugal. In the former, a vast study in two volumes, he is able to recreate in its entirety the myth of 1820 as the inaugural moment of modernity in Portugal. But as a preface to this the reader is offered a synopsis of Portuguese history. We find signs of Herculano in various places, particularly in the image of a medieval period dominated by a “municipal and parliamentary regime”. Like many nineteenth-century historians, Arriaga regards the past with present-day eyes without any scruples about using concepts inappropriate to the period, for example by identifying the medieval cortes with a parliamentary regime. The Church is held to be primarily responsible for the death of the medieval regime. The “Popes” wanted to create great Catholic empires to fight against Protestantism, he asserts. Republican discourse inherited the distrust and animosity of many Liberal intellectuals towards the Church, and in particular the Jesuits (although the anti-Jesuit tradition goes back to the eighteenth century, as witnessed by the Dedução Cronológica e Analítica of 1767) and the Inquisition (exemplarily outlined in Herculano’s História da Origem e do Estabelecimento da Inquisição em Portugal, 1854–59).

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