Oliveira Martins: the spectres in his historiography.

Publication: Portuguese Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-04

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association

In his historical narrative, Oliveira Martins consciously distances himself from the mould established by the genre of the chronicle, which was held in high esteem by the medieval tradition which dated back to the record-keeping of ancient annals, and because of the importance which it acquired during the Age of Discoveries, that is the sixteenth century, as well as for some considerable time afterwards. At the same time as he rejected the old cannons however, he managed, within this narrative nonconformity and autonomy, to retain the emotional qualities, the rhetorical formalization and the mnemonic figures of speech typical of the innate structure of the discourse in question.

Alexandre Herculano published his Historia de Portugal, 1846-53, setting out the foundations of modern historiography. Oliveira Martins who, like all intellectuals of his generation, held the 'Mestre's' work in very high regard, set out to follow the new path. But whereas Herculano used his fiction to try to explore and capture the emotions and psychological traits of actors on the historical stage, when Oliveira Martins had no record or documentary proof of the way in which such actors thought and acted in determined circumstances and situations, he sought to intuit their sentiments and to integrate them in the overall vision of his narrative. He therefore adapted to the convention followed by the ancient chroniclers who, when they weren't simply exalting their deeds and virtues in the tradition of the panegyric, would paint a portrait of princes and those courtiers whose role on the political stage made them worthy of attention. Herculano relied solidly on documentary evidence and avoided filling in historical gaps and silences with his intuitions and conjectures. His exploration of what we would today call the political imaginary was confined to an artistic approach within the genre of the historical novel, and this methodological dichotomy differentiated his work as researcher and artist.

Oliveira Martins, for whom history was drama, had a different approach. He took all these diverse ingredients, weighed up the temperaments and urges of his actors, the situation in which they found themselves, whether by chance or by their own hand, the extent of pressure of events upon them and, in one particular event, he would uncover an essential significance that would shed light on the entire historical process. Aware of the interests, anxieties and expectations of his readers, deeply committed to forming a public opinion in keeping with the needs of a new middle class, Oliveira Martins launched the Biblioteca das Ciencias Sociais. Aimed at providing a theoretical background that would enable the reader to understand the evolutionary process of the history of civilization, the Biblioteca's goal was to educate the reader, and to give him or her the appropriate means to understand the great philosophical and political questions of the time. The series was not just aimed at the everyday reader, however, but also at secondary school students, although for these readers the author had to rewrite his Historia de Portugal in a more appropriate style. This pedagogical preoccupation, allied with the desire to be able to influence great swathes of the educated population, led Oliveira Martins to develop a skill in discourse and a new rhetoric with increased persuasive powers. He wanted to convince his readers, to show them his vision of the state of the nation and the factors which at a time of radical changes in Western Europe, had led it to its precarious economic and moral situation, namely in relation to the whole colonial issue.

Far from simply presenting a descriptive analysis of the social problems of his time, Oliveira Martins tried to outline the process which had led to the crisis in Portuguese society during the 1870s and 1880s. In the same year, 1879, he published Historia da Civilizacao Iberica and Historia de Portugal. These two works were an integral part of his Biblioteca das Ciencias Sociais project, and from a hermeneutical point of view it is only worth studying them together which, because of a tendency to consider them separately, though related by the common nature of their themes, has rarely been done. Oliveira Martins himself emphasized more than once the need to see Historia da Civilizacao Iberica and Historia de Portugal as a diptych, part of a vast work he had designed, in a spirit of scientific divulgation, portraying the formation of modern states in the peninsula from the beginnings of the history of civilization during Roman colonization to his own time.

Oliveira Martins maintains a direct contact with the reader, frequently interrupting the thread of his narrative to make a commentary and expound the reasons behind his method, in order to show the reader the meaning of evenemental history, to underline the importance of certain events and how they can form an intelligible structure. In an intuitive approach, he attempts to apprehend the specific character and characteristics of the various communities that inhabit the Iberian peninsula, considering them as important in themselves. Thus he seeks to deduce the evolutionary process which shaped them and establishes the various categories of factors present in their origin. Shifting his perspective constantly, he divides the evolution of a civilization into three major cycles. In the first natural phenomena predominate: movements of races and peoples, the formation of languages and of juridical and religious symbols; in the second, social phenomena dominate: the development of institutions, encounters between classes and class struggle. In the third, finally, moral phenomena take the lead: the conscious definition of the ideas to which all forms of intellectual activity are subordinate and with which juridical and economic theories are formed. (1)

This method, described in Historia da Civilizacao Iberica, is used by Martins not only in this work but also in his other historical narratives, namely Historia da Republica Romana and Historia de Portugal. And it reveals a specific area of study and direction which he had adopted across the board for the Biblioteca das Ciencias Sociais. After a punctillious examination of the facts, Oliveira Martins integrates them into the structural plane of his narrative, presenting a coherent picture of the functioning of a modern nation. This is the moment in which the historical actors enter the scene. Kings, warriors, saints, priests and poets, portrayed in tones which owe...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.