The Commission accompanied the Military History Archive from its creation, using the same facilities but extending its action to the entire country through the corresponding members who conducted research on local history and identified documents of interest to military history, the importance of which would then be analysed by the Commission. Among its first works is the "establishment of a history of military units and their participation in battles and other military actions, in order to establish their captions and insignia." From the first volume of the Archive Bulletin, the Military Commission published an annual report without interruption until 1963, reporting its activities, especially the acquisition and transfer of documents of interest to military history, incorporated into the collection of the Military History Archive. With the creation of the History and Military Service Directorate within the scope of the Army in 1959, the Commission began to lose its role and eventually became extinct while, at the same time, the Portuguese Commission of Military History was established, under the Ministry of Defence, in 1989.

The documentation of the Military History Archive has served as the basis for numerous studies and even academic theses in the field of contemporary historiography. It may even be said that its documentary heritage has progressively served for different purposes, including the publication of works on military history, as well as the illustration of several works in this area. Among all of them, the works conducted by António Pedro Vicente are particularly noteworthy, especially two fundamental texts published in the Archive Bulletin, one in no. 40 of 1970 on "A Soldier in the Peninsular War – Bernardim Freire de Andrade e Castro" and another in Bulletin no. 41 of 1971 on the "Political, Geographical, and Military Memories of Portugal." Also noteworthy are the works of Artur Teodoro de Matos, who published his study "The Military Academy of Terceira Island, 1810-1925" in  1980 in volume no. 50 of the Bulletin.

The list of directors of the Military History Archive is as follows: Luís Henrique Pacheco Simões (1921-1925); Henrique de Campos Ferreira Lima (1927-1949); Alberto Faria de Morais (1950-1957); João Carlos de Sá Nogueira (1958-1969); Horácio Madureira dos Santos (1969-1971); José Rodrigues Raimundo (1971); Luís Mendes (1971-1975); Nuno Bessa de Almeida Frazão (1976-1989).

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | (Pdf)