From the conceptual point of view and on a historiographical level, Ensaio… thinks about the “distant causes”, in the light of the “tendency of the century”, and the ensuing “prosperity or decadence of the various peoples”. Concomitantly, the author chose to divide the work by dynastic era, which was the most common solution adopted by historians strictu sensu, rather than splitting the text into sections on individual reigns. This option was not an original one, having already been chosen by the anonymous author of Períodos da história portuguesa e moderna (Porto, 1841-42), among others. However, Ensaio… solidified the discourse on national awareness. The validity of legitimacy based on tradition was undermined, and the latter’s place was now taken by reason and will. The fact is that the authors of the idealised historiographical visions of the early 19th century worked hard to use narrative to legitimate Portuguese independence, which they explained through the person and actions of King Afonso Henriques, with links to the Battle of Ourique, the Cortes of Lamego, and the Fundamental Law, which were crucial evidence for the arguments of the 17th century Restoration.

Rocha looked at the subject of nationhood and the bases for an established Law, which had previously been seen as self-evident and had never been questioned, from the angle of another idea of the truth about the nation. This was close to that which had germinated in the most critical minds in the first half of the 19th century and was founded on forms of chance and people’s will, or even on the unexplainable, and which had come to constitute a new argument for a nationalist way of thinking. He rejected any possibility that Portugal was not a legitimate country, but excluded a teleological division of the world, the presence of God in history, and any form of divine intervention in the history of the planet. Methodical doubt was acutely present in Rocha’s work. It can be seen in both his stance and his critical argumentation with regard to the controversies surrounding the foundation of Portugal, and helps us evaluate the criteria he used to gauge what true discourse was. He argued that scientific truth cannot be defended by simply pointing to discourse that is deemed legitimate because it was proffered by authorities, but must comply with a norm of verisimilitude, supported by the display of some kind of proof – an examination to which he subjected old writers and coeval works. To use his words: “as to the heroic description of those times that we find in some of the modern historians, to those who followed the credulous Frei Bernardo de Brito and who filled the first thirty chapters of Monarchia Lusitana with him, that description is manifestly a fable, imagined purely to flatter Portuguese pride” (Ensaio… 1896, p.2). Rocha’s preferred sources for the period prior to the establishment of the Portuguese kingdom were the Greco-Roman geographers and historians, whom he abundantly quoted. Although he considered them “accredited writers”, even so he blamed them for providing “scanty, confused information, as is normally the case with the history produced in the first phase of every nation” (idem, p.2).

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