As a result of the triumph of the bourgeoisie in 1383, the literate class increased and became dominant, which was “at the same time both an effect and a cause of social parasitism”. He went on to conclude about this period: “The nation, therefore, was not educated in the discipline of work, but very early on became absorbed and specialised in commercial speculation and trade, which was closely linked to the activities of the crusading knights; these facts, the ruin of the old nobility , the worsening of agricultural poverty and the related bacharelesque and bureaucratic parasitism, are the chief characteristics of the new regime brought in with the social revolution of 1383-1385”. This he published in 1915.

In this same year Sérgio edited a collection entitled Biblioteca de Educação (Education Library) for Renascença Portuguesa in which he included his provocative Considerações histórico-pedagógicas (Historico-pedagogical considerations). He also proposed a section called Biblioteca popular de história económica e social (Popular Library of Economic and Social History) which “would consist of a series of interesting documents about our economic and social history.” This was an idea Renascença Portuguesa would turn into the Biblioteca de Estudos Económicos e Sociais (Library of Economic and Social Studies), but Sérgio also kept it in mind, returning to the idea later in a volume that would come out in 1924 published by the Lisbon National Library Press: Antologia dos economistas portugueses. I. Obras em Português (Anthology of Portuguese Economists. I. Works in Portuguese, 1924). Sérgio’s references reveal that he is already aware at that time of many works of history and in particular of sources, some as uncommon as Duarte Gomes Solis’s Discursos sobre los comercios de las dos Indias (Discourses on the trading of the two Indies). They also reveal his relationship with David Lopes and the documental advice he asked him for and received. Sérgio always knew how to emphasise the importance of the study of history to gain knowledge of the present and to evaluate it prospectively.

The first moment of controversial historiographical and ideological tension occurred in the 1930s when António Sérgio published his first volume of Ensaios (Essays). He included in this work A conquista de Ceuta (Ensaio de interpretação não-romântica do texto de Azurara) [The conquest of Ceuta (A non-romantic interpretation of Azurara’s text)], an essay that is pivotal in explaining the beginning of the Portuguese expansion, which was traditionally seen as “that of a war operation waged by the nobility, the gentes d’algo, to strike a blow against the Islamist.”

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