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His colleague A. A. Mendes Correia did not agree with him which led to a mild debate, for Damião Peres was no polemicist (Portugal “ex animo portucalensium”. Resposta ao artigo crítico Portugal “ex nihilo”! do Prof. Mendes Correia, 1938). In this text he firmly defends his position and we witness a confrontation between two views: that of the historian, who needs concrete proof to put forward explanatory hypotheses, and that of the geographer and ethnographer who moves from the present to the past without requiring any further proof to establish his basic ideas in time. As Damião Peres concluded: “Prof. Mendes Correia has – I suppose – a naturalist’s background; I, a humanistic background”(p. 10), with the supposition being, of course, the nasty words of a polemicist. But the acrimony between the two former colleagues went no further.
Damião Peres tried to encourage publishers to produce historical materials, something that had not been done before in Portugal. He did this first in Barcelos (at the Companhia Editora do Minho, then at Portucalense) and then in Porto and Coimbra where he oversaw publication of a series of important works in carefully edited editions: Monstruosidades do tempo e da fortuna (Monstrosities of time and fortune); D. Gregório de Almeida’s Restauração de Portugal prodigiosa (The Prodigious Restoration of Portugal); Frei Rafael de Jesus’ 18ª Parte da Monarchia Lusitana (18th Part of the Lusitanian Monarchy) (with Manuel Lopes de Almeida and César Pegado); Bernardo Gomes de Brito’s História trágico-marítima (Tragic Maritime History) and the Diário da viagem de Vasco da Gama (Journal of the Voyage of Vasco da Gama).
In the 1950s he promoted publication through the Portuguese Academy of History of several texts that were considered important for the study of the history of the Portuguese expansion, with a special place given to those relating to Guinea: Viagens de Luís de Cadamosto e de Pedro de Sintra (Voyages of Luís de Cadamosto and Pedro de Sintra, 1948); Os mais antigos roteiros da Guiné (The oldest navigational route maps of Guinea,1952); Planta da praça de Bissau e sua adjacentes por Bernardino António Álvares de Andrade (Map of the fort of Bissau and its surroundings by Bernardino António Álvares de Andrade, 1952); Duas descrições seiscentistas da Guiné de Francisco de Lemos Coelho (Two seventeenth century descriptions of Guinea by Francisco de Lemos Coelho,1953); Relações da viagem da fragata “Nossa Senhora da Estrela” a Bissau em 1753 (Accounts of the voyage of the frigate “Nossa Senhora da Estrela” to Bissau in 1753, 1953) and Esmeraldo De Situ Orbis por Duarte Pacheco Pereira (1954). He also published other texts which were carefully selected, judiciously presented and annotated in great detail.
