The aim of this project is to publish a print version of the book Pensamento histórico e acção política do 2º Visconde de Santarém (1809-1855) [Historical thought and political action of the 2nd Viscount of Santarém (1809-1855)], which has already been published by Bubok Editorial as an eBook in pdf format with very few sales. The amount asked for will be used in such a way that each person who wishes to invest 6 euros in the project will receive a copy in exchange for their contribution, col...
For over 100 years no exhaustive study of the 2nd Viscount of Santarém (1791-1856), a historian, geographer and politician, has been published in paper format. The present book is an adaptation of a doctoral thesis and consists of five chapters on different aspects of the life and work of this writer, who lived in exile in Paris between 1834 and 1856. He was one of the greatest names in Portuguese science and culture of the first half of the 19th century and was well known throughout the whole of the cultured Europe of the time. It is an alternative view of a Portugal that is now forgotten since the Viscount of Santarém was a minister of D. Miguel, the king defeated by the liberals in 1834, and therefore consigned to oblivion by almost all Portuguese culture. The present book summarizes more than fifteen years of documental research and historiographical reflection and can answer many of the doubts existing among a Portuguese public who are only vaguely aware of this figure and do not have access to relevant information about him, and certainly not at the giveaway price of 6 euros for 336 pages!
In this book precious information can be found about the intellectual and political path of the 2nd Viscount of Santarém (1791-1856), one of the most important Portuguese scholars and historians of the first half of the 19th century and a world famous geographer and cartographer in his time. Given his important written production from 1821 to 1854, he is like an unknown link in the evolutive chain of Portuguese historical thought from the founding of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (in 1779) to the publication of Alexandre Herculano’s Portugaliae Monumenta Historica (1856-1867).
Organized in five chapters with just under three hundred pages dedicated to his personal and intellectual life, historiography, politics, diplomacy, and geography and cartography, Pensamento histórico e acção política do 2º Visconde de Santarém (1809-1855) forms an interdisciplinary analysis of a historical figure who is as complex and fascinating as he is forgotten and misunderstood by the Portuguese public.
Keywords: second viscount of Santarém; Alexandre Herculano; Academia das Ciências of Lisboa; D. Miguel; portuguese traditional cortes; History; Geography; Cartography.