It is in this context that Schaefer’s original and methodical effort, the scientific and innovative nature of his analysis and the consistency of the ideas and concepts employed in his Geschichte von Portugal stand out. The work was published in Hamburg and Gotha at two different times: two volumes in 1836 and 1839; the remaining three in 1850, 1852 and 1854. The German historian had the ambition to cover almost the entire history of the Portuguese monarchy, going back to the time of the County of Portugal and covering the entire historical sequence of the Portuguese nation, from the 11th to the 19th centuries (1095-1820). The German edition was organised as follows: Volume 1, 1095-1383; Volume 2, 1383-1495; 3rd, 1495-1580; 4th, 1580-1667 (with more than half of the volume reproducing information relating to Portuguese India, from 1521 to 1580); 5th and last, 1667-1820. When he published the first volume in 1836, Schaefer was around 42 years old. Previously, other histories and historical summaries of Portugal had been written by foreigners, but without comparable results. At that time, the young Herculano, second librarian at the Porto Public Library, was twenty-six years old and far from aspiring to write the History of Portugal, which would begin publication in 1846.

There is no doubt that Schaefer’s History of Portugal, covering a very long period of the Portuguese monarchy – from 1095 to 1820 – was an invaluable tool for understanding national history, especially as it was originally part of a collection of histories of European states, produced in Germany with all the scientific and methodological rigour that this implied at the time of its publication (1836-1854). The ‘simple rhetorical narration of events’ was definitely a thing of the past.

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