FOREWORD
In this 59th edition the Revista Brasileira de História inaugurates a new phase, with the exclusively digital edition and also with its English version. This new format, however, maintains the commitment to give continuity to the editorial line from previous editions, as well as facing the challenges which may arise.
This change represents a new stage at the history of RBH. Our historiographical tradition of giving value to paper texts and archives makes us fearful of these new writing props. However, the rapid transformations which the editorial market has recently gone through imply a growing trend of digitalizing its journals. The electronic publication allows technology to be used as a means of enriching the historiographical production, i.e., it opens up the possibility of a history writing which goes beyond words and begins to compose narratives with images, hypertexts, 3D environments and everything else the digital prop may offer researchers. Such change also aims to internationalize the Brazilian historiographical production, as well as to diminish the costs and logistic difficulties related to storage and distribution.
In this edition, the dossier "History and historians" has gathered five articles which present a discussion about the role and the conceptions of history and historians which have marked Brazilian historiography. Rebeca Gontijo´s text weaves relations between the trajectory of Capistrano de Abreu in search for a place for himself , in a specific social place, and his trajectory in search for a new interpretation of Brazil.
Maria da Glória de Oliveira´s text analyses in eighteenth-century Brazil the constitution of a historiographical regime with scientific intentions. The main goal of the article is to analyze the shapes which defined the specific qualities and competences for the study and writing of history, especially in the biographies of some "men of letters", published in the Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro during the nineteenth century.
Vânia Moreira´s article aims to enlighten the importance of historiography as an organizing tool of the indigenous rights during the structuring of the imperial regime in Brazil. The historiographic divergences between defenders and detractors of indigenous presence in national history and the connection of this intellectual argument with the imperial indigenous policy both deserve to be highlighted.
Roquinaldo Ferreira analyzes the advent, consolidation and transformation of African studies in the United States since the 1960´s. His article aims to discuss the academic, political and geopolitical context which have ballasted the creation of this field of studies. In order to do so, it emphasizes the transformations in American society in the 1960´s, especially the African-American civil rights movement, as well as international context, particularly the Cold War.
Arthur Assis offers an interpretation of the book Do Império à República, by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, which retells the Brazilian political history in the second half of the nineteenth century. Based on concepts developed by the history theorist Jörn Rüsen, the author discusses particularly three aspects of the book mentioned above: the theoretical artifacts which preside the interpretation of the Brazilian Monarchy crisis, the narrative standards which sustain the constitution of meaning about this past experience, as well as the present orientation context that served as a parameter of meaning/sense to the interpretation and representation.
Ending the dossier, Mônica Jinzenji and Ana Maria Galvão analyze the various looks upon Brazilian history produced and applied on three historiographical works of the first half of the nineteenth century: History of Brazil, by R. Southey, Histoire du Brésil, by A. Beauchamp, and the content of Brazil history published on O Mentor das Brasileiras. The analysis of these works allows us to verify the translation and text adaption works and the transformation in materialities of the props by the authors.
The other articles of this edition focus on various themes. Jacqueline Hermann´s text intends to map, based on the life and political trajectory of D. António, Prior of Crate, some questions to the Iberian political and cultural studies in the turn from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century.
José Luís Cardoso writes about the motivations which were present at the origin of the creation of the first Bank of Brazil, founded in 1808, and the reasons for the failure to achieve its goals.
Marcelo Henrique Dias deals with the processes of extraction, processing and trade of hardwood in the territory of the captaincy of Ilhéus, above all from the moment in which the Portuguese Crown began to exploit directly this business. The analysis falls upon the dimension, the administrative mechanisms, the destinations of the trade and its general importance within regional economy.
Denise Moura presents on her text the first results of a research about coastal trade and its relations with the functioning of the colonial system and the context of the Independence.
Last, Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta in "Modernizing Repression: USAID and the Brazilian Police" analyzes the action of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Brazil: the advice for training and techniques modernization of police corporations. The text tries to synthesize the most important aspects of the functioning of this program - which in Brazil took place between 1960 and 1972 - trying to understand the objectives of both sides involved, as to avoid simplified conceptions.
We finalize this edition of RBH with three book reviews which offer the reader relevant texts for historiographical debate renovation. André de Melo Araújo reviewed The case for books: past, present and future, by Robert Darnton. Pedro Spínola presents Valdei Lopes de Araújo´s book A experiência do tempo: conceitos e narrativas na formação nacional brasileira, and Elisa Garcia signs the review of Maria Regina Celestino´s book Os índios na história do Brasil.
Editorial Board
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
26 May 2011 -
Date of issue
June 2010
