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THE TEAM
CONTACT
The new historiographic al trends that emerged in the 1950s, largely originating from or inspired by researchers associated with the Parisian Annales school, did not ignore the environment. Likewise, post-war geographers did not overlook history. This is evident in the work of the American scholar Dan Stanislawski, who studied Portugal (1959) and the Algarve (1963) since, a s has been noted, the “new history is, to a large extent, a child of geography” (Hervé Couteau-Bégarie, apud Silbert). The French historian Albert Silbert, a disciple of Marc Bloch, stated unequivocally: “For this geography, primarily concerned with the relationships between humans and the natural environment, the historical conditions of the distribution of landscapes and activities were of great importance” (Silbert, “Modernidade...” ["Modernity ..."], p. 327).
Silbert’s methodology closely followed the approach initiated by Godinho in his study of Morocco and applied experimentally to the Canary Islands. This methodology intertwined history and geography, as well as economics and ethnography, in an interdisciplinary and mutually influential framework. In his thesis, Le Portugal Méditerranéen à la fin de l’Ancien Régime (1966), Silbert demonstrated the significance of “agrarian collectivism” in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Mediterranean Portugal.
In Coimbra, among more modern historians, geography was also deemed necessary for the explanations they sought. This was the case with António de Oliveira and Luís Ferrand de Almeida. The former sought to reconstruct the reality of 16th-century Coimbra, while the latter studied the southern borders of Brazil and later the River Plate Basin—“an open gateway to the river routes that provided access to the inland regions of the continent” (Almeida, “A Colónia” ["The Colony"], p. 163) and the establishment, trajectory, and decline of the Colony of Sacramento. I n the introduction to his doctoral dissertation, . António de Oliveira left a caution: “The studies undertaken centre on two areas: the city of Coimbra and its hinterland. Predominantly. Larger areas, including the natural and geographical frameworks they belong to, cannot be excluded” (Oliveira, A Vida [Life], p. 3). In various studies where knowledge of the land and natural constraints is consistently present, Luís Ferrand de Almeida consistently highlight s the presence of human groups in specific landscapes. It is no coincidence that he studied and examined notable aspects of the introduction and spread of maize in Portugal, where his careful reading of the work of Orlando Ribeiro is noteworthy, alongside those of professional historians. However, one should not overlook his excellent study titled Aclimatação de plantas do Oriente no Brasil durante os séculos XVII e XVIII [The Acclimatisation of Oriental Plants in Brazil during the 17th and 18th Centuries], which involved understanding and explaining the natural conditions that enabled these botanical transfers, with far-reaching implications not only for the Portuguese Empire but also globally.
