Details of what he did between 1879 and 1891 when he published his first historical work (at the age of 32) are not known. It is likely though that Viana dedicated a good part of these twelve years to studying the archives of Silva Carvalho and Joaquim Leocádio da Costa (Idem, Idem, p. 9 and Visconde de Santarém, Correspondência..., vol. V, 1918, pp. 124 e ss.).

This would explain how he managed to publish a monumental work in three volumes, José da Silva Carvalho e o seu Tempo (José da Silva Carvalho and his Time), starting in 1891. This was so important on a documental level that Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins (1845-94), in the third edition of Portugal Contemporâneo (Contemporary Portugal) (1894), quotes passages from Viana’s study (Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins, Portugal Contemporâneo, vol. I, 1981 (1ª ed. 1881), Livro III, pp. 197-199, 214, 238, 264-65, 267-69 e 348, n. 1).

This collection earned him nomination to become a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and he was admitted following a written recommendation dated 13 July 1892 from Oliveira Martins himself, Inácio Francisco Silveira da Mota and Jaime Constantino de Freitas Moniz – all of whom were illustrious names of historiographical production at the time – and an election held on 9 December later that year (António Baião, Discurso acerca do centenário..., Op. cit., pp. 10-11).

It should be noted that Viana’s concern with restoring documental glory to the historical memory of Chartist liberalism is not unconnected to the political proposal of monarchic socialism, which appeared as a response to the growing deterioration and erosion of the political institutions of the time (António Viana, José da Silva Carvalho e o seu Tempo, vol. II, 1894, “Advertência”, pp. I-VII).

During the reign of D. Carlos (1889-1908), Viana may well have been drawn to intellectual and political circles close to, or related to, the elite group Os Vencidos da Vida [Those Defeated by Life] and to Caesarist solutions as defended by Oliveira Martins and João Franco (1855-1929). We know he was a member of, or at least participated in, the Partido Regenerador Liberal [Liberal Regeneration Party] towards which Henrique da Gama Barros (1833-1925) was also drawn, and António Baião, second curator of the Torre do Tombo from 1902 on, recalls seeing them together at the national archive. What is more, the letters Franco himself wrote to Viana from exile in 1908, later transcribed by Baião, are quite confessional, almost fraternal (Idem, Idem, pp. 15-20; see, about Gama Barros, José Maria Amado Mendes, “Desenvolvimento e estruturação da historiografia portuguesa”, in História da História em Portugal (Séculos XIX e XX), 1996, p. 186).

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