In his study Origens Europeias. Esquema etno-histórico, Oliveira Ramos defends the importance of the evolutive nature of Spenserian inspiration within the historical process, underlining that events were consequences of multiple causes in the complexity of civilisational becoming, a position close to positivist historiography. He uses the concept of evolution to expound his idea of the long-term event in opposition to the concept of the short-term historical fact that occurs at a precise and particular moment and is the result of direct and concrete causes. His following works, however, were inspired by the work of Alexandre Herculano and his ideas relating to the method to apply in historiographical investigation, but nevertheless he did not allow himself to become influenced by the master’s interpretations, notably his thesis of national decadence and anticlericalism. Like Herculano, he was concerned with the “character of the Nation” and with the participation of the lower classes in the historical process of the country. Oliveira Ramos did not repeat Herculano’s lesson on the origins of the Nation, but sought to adapt it in the light of the works that several of his colleagues (Teófilo Braga, Adolfo Coelho, Leite de Vasconcelos, Paulo Mêrea) had produced on the insurrectional or political theses of the founding of the nation and on works on the continuity between the Lusitanians and the Portuguese. For him, the country’s independence was linked to a series of complex causes of an ethnic, geographical and political nature. Besides medieval studies, Oliveira Ramos also devoted himself to the History of the Portuguese Discoveries, seeking to enhance the value of the huge overseas campaign undertaken by the country in the 15th and 16th centuries. This can be proved by his texts in the História de Portugal (History of Portugal), edited by Damião Peres, which he wrote towards the end of his life at a time when blindness had almost totally taken away his sight.

Oliveira Ramos also translated works by Edgar Allan Poe, Beaumarchais and Jules Verne and, in the field of historiography, he translated Sophus Ruge’s History of the Age of the Discoveries and edited the Portuguese translation of G. Oncken’s Universal History from the sixth volume on.

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