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His fondness for enhancing the value of regionalisms and the biographies of the great monarchs, for the study of welfare institutions and for the importance he gave to the action of the common people in history all reveal some influences of republican historiography and a certain historical nationalism cultivated by the Portuguese Renaissance movement to which he belonged. He offers us a factual perception of historical reality, and we can often observe in his discourse an almost theatrical succession of events. However, Ângelo Ribeiro does not neglect an analysis of the facts; he questions history, puts forward hypotheses and dissects contexts, always based on primary and reliable sources, and he is always careful to ensure the clarity of concepts.
During the last few years of his life, Ângelo Ribeiro collaborated once more on a História de Portugal, but this one edited by Hernâni Cidade and published by Lello & Irmão in 1936. For this work, he wrote seven chapters on modern history topics. It was, however, a less ambitious publication than the História de Portugal edited by Damião Peres. With the closure of the first Faculty of Letters of Porto in 1931, Ângelo Ribeiro, who was a full professor at the time, became a ‘professor adido’ or auxiliary teacher. In 1933, he returned to Lisbon where he was successively posted as a teacher in various Lisbon secondary schools - Liceu de Passos Manuel, Liceu de Gil Vicente and Liceu de Camões. During this period he collaborated on the Enciclopédia Italiana (Italian Encyclopaedia), writing an article about the history of Portugal, a summary beginning with the formation of nationality and ending with the rise of Salazar’s corporative state, in which he highlighted two key periods - the Expansion and the crisis of national autonomy - once again using a discourse that was both factual and political. During the year 1936, as a result of the regulatory decree relating to the situation of auxiliary teachers, he was forced to retire. In the same year, on 5 October, he died suddenly in his house in Lisbon, the victim of a heart attack, at the age of 50. The memory of him as a pedagogue par excellence would appear to have been retained by some of his students who later became historians themselves, one such being Jorge Borges de Macedo who would remember him reverently as his teacher at the Liceu de Passos Manuel.
