Davide Bertolotti was an intellectual of Piedmontese origin. He was interested in many different areas and is known primarily for the wide-ranging nature of his work. He also figures among those foreign historians and disseminators of information who, in the nineteenth century, devoted themselves to writing histories of Portugal. He was born in Turin in 1784, the son of a wealthy merchant. This enabled him to have access to schooling in various places and not only in the region where he was born (where social and economic traditionalism together with a solid Jesuit culture supported the administrative structure of the Savoy dynasty). In 1812 he moved to Milan and it was there that he began his work. In this intellectually effervescent environment that proved vital for his intellectual pursuits, he produced a number of wide-ranging and diversified written works, a common occurrence among the intellectuals of the time.

One of Bertolotti’s academic interests was to disseminate information about history and geography. He wanted to make people know about the world at a time when the spread of reading was accompanied by a growing interest in travelling (this being right in the middle of the period of the Grand Tour). In the ambit of a new periodical publication he edited, Il Ricoglitore, he made use of his linguistic skills to collect and translate information taken from foreign publications. However, it is in his Italian translations of the compendiums of world history by the Counts of Ségur that the “Histories” of various countries (such as China, Switzerland and also Portugal) appear. His work on Portugal (Storia di Portogallo dai primi tempi sino ai nostri giorni. Tratta dal Durdent, dal Balbi e da altri autori, 1824, henceforth SdP), written in Italian and published in various editions, was a work of an informational nature that achieved a certain editorial and commercial success. This contrasted with the general evaluation of his work by contemporary and also later critics, who deemed it mediocre. What is certain though is that his work came to be considered the precursor to 19th century publications of the same genre, as well as the pioneer of 19th century romantic historiography about Portugal.

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