For all students of Brazilian history, experienced or beginners, this guide will henceforth be indispensable. Based on his courses as professor of Brazilian history in The Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Professor Lacombe, first vice-president of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro and member of the Academia Brasileña de Letras, has published what is in effect his personal fichario. Those already acquainted with A pesquisa histórica no Brasil by José Honório Rodrigues, also an excellent work, will welcome Lacombe’s book as a companion volume; and those who are not acquainted with either can hardly have taken their first lessons in Brazilian history.
The title of Lacombe’s work is self-revealing. He begins with fontes históricas, in which he includes two subjects: a brief explanation of how to introduce the student to history, and a catalogue of the published guides to the archives and libraries where Brazilian history can be researched. In Portugal he lists the principal guides to the Torre do Tombo, and the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon, as well as to other archives in Évora, Coimbra, Oporto and elsewhere. He includes also archives and libraries in Spain, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the Vatican, and other countries.
The second section treats regional history, biography, memoirs, correspondence, diaries, and genealogy. The third is concerned with the auxiliaries of history: paleography, philology, diplomatics, chronological guides, seals, clothing, heraldry, archaeology, iconography, epigraphy, numismatics, geography, medicine, mathematics, and all the sciences which compose each a small portion of the historian’s interests.
The bibliography and historiography of Brazil comprise the matter of the fourth section. In the fifth, he includes the principal societies dedicated to history, such as the Academia Real de História organized in Portugal in 1720; the Academia dos Esquecidos of Bahia whose ephemeral existence in 1724 was devoted to history; the Academia Real das Ciéncias organized in Portugal in 1779; the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro dating from 1838; the Academia Brasiliera de Letras, 1896; and various historical institutes of Brazil as well as the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History with its headquarters in Mexico. The various historical congresses and the six Luso-Brazilian colloquia with their relevant publications come in this section.
The sixth section discusses the teaching of history in Brazil in the colonial period, in the Colégio Pedro II in the nineteenth century, and in the universities of this century. He also mentions the principal collections such as the Brasiliana of the Companhia Editora Nacional of São Paulo, and the Documentos Brasileiros published by José Olympio in Rio de Janeiro.
Section seven is devoted to historiography from the colonial times to the present. The principal historians—Varnhagen, Southey, Handelmann, Capistrano de Abreu, the Baron of Rio Branco and many others—are discussed. A portion of this section mentions the many Americans, English, French and other foreigners writing about Brazil’s history. He names, among others, Manchester, Burns, Skidmore, Dulles, Lowenstein, Hahner, Stepan, Stein, Dean, Bergsman, Della Cava, O’Neill Thornton, Kieman, Russell-Wood, Boxer, Graham, Bethel, and Bourdon.
Professor Lacombe is among those Brazilian historians who, with a bit of envy, notes how much of the interpretation of Brazil is being done by foreigners through their researches in Brazilian and Portuguese archives. He hopes his book will stimulate and aid young Brazilians to research. It can also do as much for young American, British, and other foreign scholars.
Inexpensive enough to be bought by professors, not to speak of graduate students, it, along with Rodrigues’s A Pesquisa histórica no Brasil, should be one of the first two books in a library on Brazilian history.
