Abstract

PUNTONI, Pedro. Revisionism in the Tropics: The Political Model of the Portuguese Colonial Empire, by António Manuel Hespanha. e-JPH [online]. 2020, vol.18, n.1, pp.76-105.  Epub June 30, 2020. ISSN 1645-6432.  https://doi.org/10.26300/8w8x-pq82.

This article presents a brief archaeology of the emergence of a political model of the Portuguese Colonial Empire in the works of António Manuel Hespanha. In his PhD thesis, As Vésperas do Leviathan (1989), Hespanha admitted that his investigation was restricted to the context of mainland Portugal. But he also confessed his interest in expanding his innovative approach to the study of the overseas territories. In fact, after 2000, he underwent what was identified as a kind of imperial turn in his work by writing many papers in which he tried to define a model for understanding power structures and political institutions in the colonial contexts of the Portuguese Empire in the early modern period. This article takes a critical look at the path that led Hespanha to this imperial turn and seeks to understand how his formulations (and reformulations) changed over the course of time, based on the constructive dialogue that he established with the historiographical production on the subject, particularly in Brazil.

Keywords : António Manuel Hespanha (1945-2019); Portuguese historiography; Portuguese colonial empire; Colonization; Political history.

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