................................
THE TEAM
CONTACT
In the 1930s and 1940s, Aristides de Amorim Girão’s teachings at Coimbra became influential. His Lições de Geografia Humana [Human Geography Lessons] (1936) provided “a suggestive geographical interpretation of history, while applying rigorous observation to the analysis of social phenomena.”
He considered history and geography “inseparable”: “There is no history without geography, nor geography without history: one gives us the element of space, the other of time” (Girão, Lições, pp. 1, 17). He continued along this path, authoring study texts and materials such as Geografia de Portugal [Geography of Portugal] (1941), Atlas de Portugal [Atlas of Portugal] (1941), and Geografia Humana [Human Geography] (1946), without neglecting the organic relationship between History and Geography that he had always cultivated. This approach also informed his proposal for the regional division of the country, which was accepted by the government. However, it faced considerable criticism and objections: from those who believed that the physical regions were poorly defined, as well as from those who argued that the relationships between local communities should be respected. The position advanced by Lautensach was rejected, arguing that “a state or political region is something entirely different from, and often antagonistic to, a natural region” (Girão, Geografia, p. 432).
After the death of Silva Telles (1930), t he Faculty of Arts in Lisbon also took a long time to equip itself with duly qualified teaching staff for geography. Luís Schwalbach was more of a journalist than a geographer, and perhaps did not appreciate the presence of better-prepared colleagues. As a result, Orlando Ribeiro, who completed his doctorate in 1936 only after having served as a Portuguese lecturer in Paris (1937-1940) and as a professor in Coimbra (1940-1942), finally took up a chair in Lisbon in 1943. In his view, the relationship between geography and h istory was well defined. “The land of a people is no longer a mere natural element, but a portion of space shaped by generations, imprinted over time with the marks of the most varied influences. An original and fruitful combination of two elements: territory and civilisations .” Further on, he added : “Within the broad indeterminism of human actions, the territory sustains and conditions history” (Ribeiro, Introduções..., p. 19). With a degree of modesty (authentic or otherwise), he remarked on a topic in history and ethnology that “might benefit from being examined by someone with experience of the Portuguese land, who has often scavenged in the works of others for materials to understand fundamental aspects of its human originality, through the past ” (Ribeiro, A formação..., p. 12). In another passage, in his memoirs, he state d : “Geography, in all that concerns humankind, was a way of seeing and feeling what has persisted from History up to the present. I never again ceased to closely associate the two sciences, and with all that I have learned, I continue to believe that without a deep investigation into the past, our understanding of most aspects of human geography remains superficial and incomplete” (Ribeiro, Portugal, p. 73).
