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Garrett was primarily celebrated as a playwright and a leading writer of Portuguese romanticism, but his role as an active politician and, above all,as a commentator of the Liberal Revolution greatly contributed to the creation of a series of representations of the political history of his time. Beyond his political historian status, Garrett sought to convey a personal view of the events in which he directly or indirectly participated, and this testimony would influence the generations that followed, offering a valuable perspective on those decisive moments. Almost the same may be said of Alexandre Herculano, with the considerable difference that this historian perfectly embodied the spirit that marked the discipline in his era, both in terms of his conception and his critical method. Among many pioneering works, he was responsible for producing the first major História de Portugal [History of Portugal] worthy of that title. It was in him that romantic historicism found its great national cultivator.
On another, equally significant level were the contributions of Luís Augusto Rebelo da Silva (1822–1871), who was also responsible for a História de Portugal dos Séculos XVII e XVIII [History of Portugal of the 17th and 18th centuries] and the first professor of history of the Curso Superior de Letras, as well as José Maria Latino Coelho (1825–1891), author of the important História Política e Militar de Portugal desde os fins do Século XVIII até 1814 [Political and Military History of Portugal from the late 18th century until 1814], which was unfinished. Meanwhile, in the history of law field, the works of Henrique da Gama Barros (1833–1925) on administrative history were particularly noteworthy. In a vein that combined erudition and dissemination, Manuel Pinheiro Chagas (1842–1895) also stood out for his controversial historiographical work—much commented on, for example, by Eça de Queirós—but bequeathed us a História de Portugal in several volumes, later continued by Barbosa Colen and Alfredo Gallis, where the positivist narrative style imposed itself on the reader.
