Among those praised or harshly criticised by Orlando Ribeiro, both distant predecessors (Camões and Alexandre Herculano) and other more recent authors (Alberto Sampaio, Oliveira Martins, António Sérgio and Jaime Cortesão) feature, and even some who had been Ribeiro’s masters (Manuel de Oliveira Ramos and David Lopes) or colleagues of his generation (Torquato Soares, Albert Silbert, Virgínia Rau and Magalhães Godinho). These numerous texts can be easily accessed today as they have been compiled in Universidade, Ciência, Cidadania [University, Science, Citizenship] (2013), in Opúsculos Geográficos [Geographical Booklets] (2nd edition, volume I, 2014) and in Mestres, Colegas, Discípulos (2016-17).

Albert Silbert (1915-1996) appears to be a case in point. Having survived World War II, this French historian came to Portugal to prepare “a methodical, comprehensive monograph” entitled Le Portugal Méditerranéen à la fin de l’Ancien Régime [Mediterranean Portugal at the end of the Ancien Regime], published in 1966. Orlando Ribeiro devoted a booklet (A Evolução Agrária no Portugal Mediterrâneo, segundo A. Silbert [The Agrarian Evolution in Mediterranean Portugal according to A. Silbert] to the analysis of this work, thus beginning a new CEG-UL collection with the title Chorographia, Série Histórica [Chorographia, Historical Series]. This booklet is by no means one of his most renowned works and does not boast a beautiful style, but it is in this text that Orlando Ribeiro sought to clarify the differences and similarities between the Geographer’s and the Historian’s viewpoints.  

In fact, the space studied by Silbert as the theme for a planned French thesis largely coincided with that chosen by Ribeiro himself, thirty years earlier, that is, the vast plains of Beira Interior and of the North of the Alentejo where the twofold transition between the North and South of Portugal and between the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds occurs. Upon careful analysis, Orlando Ribeiro concluded (p. 226) that the “organisation” of this vast space was a result of its rural way of living, which “is scarcely accessible to History and must also be addressed by means of direct observation and inquiry, used by other sciences such as Geography and Ethnology.” This is, therefore, a mitigated conclusion that acknowledges the specific axis of each and every scientific speciality, but also the wide margins where diverse viewpoints overlap and are capable of mutual clarification.

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