After circulating as political training material and being published in French (1967), As Lutas de Classes em Portugal nos Fins da Idade Média [ Class Struggles in Portugal at the End of the Middle Ages ] saw three Portuguese editions during the author’s lifetime (1975, 1980 and 1997) with significant variations and additions. While the 1967 French version and the 1975 Portuguese edition do not differ significantly from each other, as the changes introduced were few and minor, the content of the subsequent editions, revised and expanded, goes beyond the original schematic tone through a thorough reworking of the text, with a colloquial tone, which gives the work the fluency and rigour necessary to reach a wide audience. The 1997 edition also includes notes by the author dedicated to António Sérgio’s preface to the edition of Fernão Lopes’ Crónica de D. João I [Chronicle of King João I].

The content of Álvaro Cunhal’s work on the crisis of 1383-1385 is not distinguished by the use of new sources or any first-hand research, as it is based on Fernão Lopes’ chronicle of King João I and on a review of existing medieval historiographical literature, with emphasis on the works of Alexandre Herculano and Gama Barros, as well as on António Sérgio’s interpretation of the “ revolution of 1383-85 ” .

As Lutas de Classes em Portugal nos Fins da Idade Média [ Class Struggles in Portugal at the End of the Middle Ages ] is a work with simultaneous epistemological, historiographical and practical significance, that is, as the application of Marxist intelligibility to a period of sudden change in the history of the country, which at no point distances itself from the ideological and political scope it sets for itself.

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