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Regarding the issue of regional and local history studies, there are more general and introductory approaches to the methodological problems, such as those of Luís Reis Torgal (1987), J. Amado Mendes (1990, expanded in 2000), Jorge Borges de Macedo (1993), António Oliveira (1995 and 2000), and José Viriato Capela (1995). However, there are few works that aim to create a historiography of history and they are generally of a regional scope or covering a more limited chronological period than what a dictionary might require. This is understandable: the survey of sources and their analysis is an enormous task and requires the formation of a team that uses digital resources to conduct a comprehensive study, enabling the establishment of: (i) a typology and a diachronic framework of the transformations and changes observed during the period under study; (ii) the conditions of production and publication of texts (whether articles or larger works); (iii) the sociological characterisation of the producers of regional and local histories; and (iv) the relationships between these smaller-scale spatial approaches and national or even transnational history. Thus, the goal here is merely to outline a succinct general framework of the aspects considered significant for understanding how history has developed its own dimension within the context of regional and local studies. To such end, the recourse to primary sources and critical methods was essential, as well as a diachronic approach to the facts, accompanied by greater rigour and objectivity in the narratives, while also engaging in dialogue with other social sciences, particularly human geography and ethnography/anthropology, in the effort to reconstruct the past of human groups on a subnational scale.
First and foremost, it is important to define the concepts and spatial scales with which regional and local history operates. Historiography is broadly understood as the art of narrating the past and constructing the memory of the human groups who are its subjects. It is concerned with the history and memory of human groups rooted in subnational spaces. The largest space is the region (from the Latin regio), referring to an area delimited by highly variable criteria. There are innumerable debates on regional division involving experts, mainly geographers and economists, but above all, they mobilise strong political interests both at the centre of power and in the peripheries. As far as regional history is concerned, the old provincial division generally proves to be most consistent with this type of study.
