This text features an interpretation of From the Empire to the Republic, the book by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda that re-enacts Brazil's late 19th century political history. Based on concepts developed by the historical theorist Jörn Rüsen, the article delves particularly into three aspects of the aforementioned book: the theoretical artefacts structuring the interpretation of the crisis of the Brazilian monarchy; the narrative patterns deployed so as to make sense of that past experience; and the orientation context that functions as source of criteria of sense/meaning for both interpretation and representation. This analysis intends to illustrate that historical theory is not only a means to abstractly explore the complex questions connected to the production of historical knowledge, but also a tool for obtaining concrete images about the intellectual practice of professional historians.
theory of history; historiography; Jörn Rüsen; Sérgio Buarque de Holanda