History of Historiography in the Amazon: the Historical and Geographical Institutes of Pará and Amazonas in constructing a regional historiographic field (1917-1951)

Abstract

This article is a contribution to Brazilian and Amazonian historiographies regarding the intellectual scenario of the early 20th century, proposing to analyze the role of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Pará (IHGP) and the Geographical and Historical Institute of Amazonas (IGHA) in constructing a regional historiographic field in the Amazon, between 1917 and 1951. The process of creating the historical institutes of the Amazon and the concurrent movement of disciplinary specialization in the region, contributing to the construction of an Amazonian historiographic field, is investigated on journals, chapters, and articles. The initial reading allowed us to understand that the IHGP and IGHA were created in response to the rubber crisis and republican influences. The historians of these institutes institutionalized their productions by publishing in their journals, whose narratives revealed a concern with elaborating a history of Amazonian origins in dialogue with the history of Brazil.

Keywords
Historiography; Intellectuals; Regionalism

Introduction

he creation of historical and geographical institutes in the Amazon represented the institutionalization of historical knowledge in the region. After all, both the historical and Geographical Institute of Pará-IHGP (1900/1917) and the geographical and Historical Institute of Amazonas, IGHA (1917)¹, also referred to here as IHGs of the Amazon, built spaces of political, social and, especially, intellectual recognition for their partners, because these associations, although committed to building the historiographical field of the Amazon, did not arise against the intelligentsia of the south of the country, but in search of visibility and integration. The IHGP and the IGHA were created as spaces for the diffusion of the growing scientific spirit in the region, bringing together a portion of the political, economic and intellectual elites of their states, thus emerging as moderns institutions, capable of revitalizing the intellectual universe of Pará and Amazonas. These associations, however, despite being inspired by the model of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro - IHGB, elaborated features of the region, acting in the construction of a regional historiographic field in the Amazon in the context of 1917 to 1951, systematizing its history, writing, publishing and disseminating narratives about this space.

The IHGB served as an organizational model for the new institutes created in the various regions of Brazil, as can be seen in the profile of the statutes and in the structure of the state journals of Pará and Amazonas, fulfilling the role of illuminating the various similar institutions: “just as Paris illuminated the world, the IHGB illuminated the set of Brazilian regions” (Ferreira; Maihl, 2017, p. 13). However, this enlightenment perspective desired by the National Institute has not always been fully realized, when one better observes the role played by states in the historical formation of the country, and their political and economic projects before the nation. The intellectual movement carried out in the Amazon region sought precisely to highlight regional aspects through historical narratives and the importance of the Amazon for national history. Thus, this movement demonstrated the search of the intellectual circles of the space for the construction of an Amazonian historiographic field and the integration of regional history in the history of Brazil, in which historians of Pará and Amazonas would elaborate a historiography adequate to the needs of the political and intellectual elites of the first decades of the twentieth century.

Manoel Luiz Salgado Guimarães considers that historical and geographical institutes were consolidated throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Brazil as institutions par excellence, where historiographical discourses were produced, “playing a decisive role in the construction of a historiography and the visions and interpretations of the national question” (Guimarães, 1988, p. 5). Based on the considerations presented by the Author, This article seeks to analyze the performance of the historical and geographical Institutes of Pará and Amazonas in the construction of a regional historiographic field in the Amazon, in the context of 1917 to 1951. It analyzes the role of historical institutes in the Amazon as headquarters of institutionalization of history as official knowledge in the region, reflecting on the profile of historians and historical narratives that circulated in the region in the first half of the twentieth century.

From the analysis of the official documentation of the institutes (statutes, decrees, speeches), magazines, chapters and articles produced by intellectuals, and the theoretical-methodological framework, one can observe, initially, the search by historians from Pará and Amazonas for the elaboration of a regional Homeland historiography disseminated through publications that highlighted narratives and characters of local history, in dialogue with the history of the nation, in the search for the construction of an official historiographic field, in addition to the search for the integration of the history of the Amazon into the history of Brazil.

This article dialogues with the concept of the field of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (2012), especially in what matters to the understanding of the history of Amazonian historiography from the emergence of the historical and geographical Institutes of Pará and Amazonas, that is, the notion of field will be emphasized in the treatise on the formation of the Amazon historiographic field here understood as a microcosm endowed by its own laws, formed by subjects (intellectuals) and institutions (IHGs), not being the focus at this time, given the size of this text, the study of the of the relations of force and struggles in this field and in this with other fields. Therefore, it will be recurrent in this article the use of the term historiographic field (Amazonian) to refer to the process of formation and institutionalization of the production of historical knowledge in the Amazon from the IHGs, highlighting the emergence of these spaces, the supports of official disclosures and the profile of the narratives of the historians members of the institutes.

In addition, this article is part of the area of historiography studies that reflect the history of historiography itself, which in this case is the Amazon historiography from the historical and geographical institutes (IHGs). According to Guimarães (2011) the history of historiography reached status around the second half of the twentieth century, when historians increasingly focused on the advances in historical knowledge and the practices of their craft, dedicating themselves “[...] to the study of the different discourses of the historical method and the various modes of writing history” (Guimarães, 2011, p. 21).

In this article, the history of Amazonian historiography turns to institutions( IHGs), publications (printed media) and narratives (writing itself), so it is possible to argue that this study can be associated with two types of history of historiography, which are called by Blanke (2016) as history of the discipline, which is dedicated to the disciplinarity of history from the institutions and the History of the functions of historical thought that focuses on the social functions of historiography, which in the case of this article reveals itself as a way of thinking about the relationship between institutions and their members and the pressing issues in Amazonian society at the time, such as the context of the economic crisis of rubber that resulted in the very process of creating historical institutes and a movement of disciplinary specialization, contributing to the construction of an Amazonian historiographic field.

From this dialogue, How was the historiographical field constituted in the Amazon region in the context of 1917 to 1951? How did the historians from the IGHA and IHGP build and think about their own history, in a context in which the region was experiencing a great economic crisis? What theoretical-methodological matrices guided his ideas, helping to settle the regional historiographical field?

Methodologically, an analysis of the productions (discourses) of historians from the historical and geographical Institutes of Pará and Amazonas in the proposed period was carried out. Thus, for the analysis of the discourses of a historical nature that circulated in Belém and Manaus, it was considered, among other elements, the place of production of the narratives, the institutions that produced them, the power/knowledge networks in which the discourses were intertwined, the types of interests to which they were linked or, as Michel de Certeau guides, the social place of production of these narratives, the institutional universe to which their authors belonged, the production process (writing practice) of them and the nature of their writings (Certeau, 2008, p. 66).

The present article is divided into four parts: the first, is dedicated to the introductory part of the work, containing the presentation of the theme, objectives, sources, theoretical framework and methodology used; the second, entitled “IGHA and IHGP: the institutionalization of historical knowledge in the Amazon”, aims to analyze the process of institutionalization of historical knowledge in the region, through the creation of historical and geographical Institutes of Pará and Amazonas in the first decades of the twentieth century; the third part, entitled “printing the historical and geographical history of Pará and Amazonas in the first decades of the twentieth century”, analyzes the importance of the journals of the IHGs of Pará and Amazonas for the construction of the regional historiographical field and how their discourses contributed to the formation of a tradition of historical thought, establishing it as fundamental for the knowledge of the region; the fourth part, “Foundation narratives: the search for the origins of the Amazon” presents the founding narratives of the History of the Amazon elaborated by the intellectuals of the IGHA and IHGP, who sought to demarcate in the journals of the historical and geographical institutes the search for the origins of the region at that time, constructing foundation myths, heroes and exemplary events.

IGHA and IHGP: the institutionalization of historical knowledge in the Amazon

The turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth, in the Amazon, represented the professionalization of historical knowledge in the region, especially after the creation of historical and geographical institutes in the two main capitals at that time: Belém and Manaus. The institutes emerged at the dawn of the twentieth century and had as their principle the emerging nationalist movement in the country, which since the second half of the nineteenth century sought to collect, organize and disseminate documents and publications concerning the history and geography of the nation. At the regional level, the historical institutes that emerged in this context collaborated in the elaboration of national history, gathering information of a regional nature and highlighting the importance of the history of the states for the national scenario.

In the Amazon region, the political, economic and social transformations experienced were also preponderant for the foundation of associations such as Historical and Geographical Institutes and Academies of Letters. After the period of economic peak lived between the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in the face of profits from rubber production, cities such as Belém and Manaus went into crisis. The successive falls in the prices of the product in international trade brought decline to the local oligarchies, since for the Amazon region rubber represented the main economic product, since 1870. Thus, the main historical and geographical institutes in the Amazon, as well as some in the Northeast region, are the result of a traditional but decadent rural elite, which, with the insecurity of the new economic situation, wished to preserve the past through writing, as a shield against an uncertain future (Schwarcz, 1993, p. 155).

It was in this context of economic crisis in Manaus that the IGHA was created in 1917 and the IHGP reinstalled after sixteen years of inactivity since its creation in 1900. Thus, some principles of the pioneering IHGB were followed, aiming to study and disseminate Geography, History and related sciences, organizing documents and publications on the history and geography of Brazil and the Amazon region.

The IHGP, founded in 1900 and refounded in 1917, built in this period a regional historiographical field, seeking to elaborate, according to Aldrin Moura de Figueiredo (2008, p. 167), “a new interpretation of the Amazon in the history of Brazil”, because, at the same time that it placed itself, as its national peer, in the condition of interpreter and “guardian of the past”, culturing the historical and biographical narratives of local and regional narratives and characters. He also stood out in the production of civic-patriotic narratives in the capital of Pará, as can be seen in the founding speech of the first vice-president of that institution, Henrique Americo Santa Rosa, in homage to the IV Centenary of the Discovery of Brazil:

Thus, as we today, solemnizing the passage of the 4th centenary of one of the great achievements of the Portuguese armada, here we find ourselves gathered laying the foundations of two societies – the historical, geographical and ethnographic Institute and the Academy of Pará, whose object exactly refers to the study of our deeds and our past, our origin and our civilization, the historical systematization of our literary and scientific development, the co-construction of sociological laws that has obeyed our progress [...]

(Revista do Instituto Histórico Geographico e Ethnographico do Pará, Tipografia: Imprensa Official, Belém, Vol. I, 1900a, p. 10).

The historians of the IHGP and IGHA, imbued with civilizing ideas, saw History as one of the paths of civic-patriotic teachings, in favor of the political project of “constituting a people and nation in the Amazon and in Brazil” (Ricci, 2007, p. 313), dedicating themselves, at the same time, to the production of a regional national History, to be conveyed through books, articles, magazines and teaching manuals that would circulate in the most diverse spaces in the first decades of the 20th century. In this period, the dream of building a cultural bridge between Europe and the Amazon was being abandoned with the end of the belle-époque and the progressive decay of the exploitation of elastic gum at the end of the 1910s, becoming the regional themes increasingly present.

In this way, in addition to a certain “statesmanship”, the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth century in the Amazon represented the emergence of a wide range of narratives about the region. During the 1920s, for example, Pará intellectuals carried out a rereading of the history of the Amazon, aiming at the elaboration of a new history for the region, relocating it in the national scenario. Thus, ” regional, regionalism and regionalist will be polysemic expressions, manipulated with multiple meanings, but that kept a common sense when one wanted to define a certain authenticity to local literary production” (Figueiredo, 2008, p. 172).

If at the national level historical knowledge carried out a strong cult of nationality, with the celebration of national ephemeris, such as the IV centenary of the discovery of Brazil, in Pará lands the commemoration of the tercentenary of the founding of Belém, between 1915 and 1916, an event that had a great influence on the reinstallation of the IHGP, gained prominence. The civic celebrations of 1916 brought to the fore, according to Iza Freitas (2007, p. 31), the ” need to create an institution that was committed to the study of the peculiar aspects of the history of the state of Pará and the Amazon” and the IHGP, especially from 1917, became one of the most important institutions for the intellectual life of the state, acting as a spokesman for the literate elite of the Amazon.

As a historical and civic landmark for the reinstallation of the IHGP, in 1917, the centenary of the Pernambuco Revolution was used by intellectuals, linking the liberating ideals of the revolutionaries of 1817 to the Republican interests of paraense historians. For these intellectuals it was necessary to found the foundations of the association, linking it to Republican ideals, because it is worth mentioning that the IHGP was reinstalled under the influence of one of the greatest Republican leaders in Pará, including responsible for the first foundation of the Institute in 1900, the military Lauro Nina Sodré, who held the position of Governor of the state, in 1917. It is not trivial that most of the commemorations, within the framework of the IHGP, were of military connotations and, whenever possible, with some historical bias related to republicanism. Thus, the Pará intelligentsia sought to align the refoundation of the IHGP with what was on the agenda nationally, since the revolution of 1817 served the patriotic ideology at that time.

Many intellectuals gained prominence in the capital of Pará and Amazonas at that time, such as the triad of “Engineers of history” João de Palma Muniz, Henrique Américo Santa Rosa, Ignácio Baptista de Moura, as well as Arthur Vianna, Theodoro Braga, Arthur Cezar Ferreira Reis, Anísio Jobim and Agnello Bittencourt. These were men of letters, members of the elite who occupied privileged positions in the state bureaucracy, or renowned politicians.

They were also literati, lawyers, religious, doctors, engineers, etc., careers, then, of practice to be followed by the children of the Brazilian elite, what Sérgio Miceli titled “polygraph intellectuals”². This generation of Amazonian intellectuals, contrary to previous generations – from 1890 to 1910 and their utopias based on the wealth of elastic gum –, gave projection to Amazonian regionalism, “contrary to an old premise of the nineteenth century, that history always emerged from the center of power, from the palace deeds, from the daily life of the court” (Figueiredo, 2012, p. 19).

With regard to the vast historiographical production elaborated by these intellectuals, many works gained prominence in the capital of Pará. In addition to the production of historical works, maps, catalogs, reports, statistical surveys and bibliographic notes were drawn, a production linked to the historical and Geographical Institute, the capital’s newspapers and literary and scientific magazines of the time.

In the other pole of the Amazon, IGHA was disseminated an arsenal of practices and discourses about local history and geography, creating and legitimizing narratives about the region, indicating from the beginning the role of history as a reference, because for the intellectuals of the institution “history is the witness of time, the light of truth, the school of life” (Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, Manaus: Tipografia: Secção de Obras da Imprensa Pública, Ano I, Vol. I, 1917a, p. 64). The decline of rubber in the Amazon caused the manauara elite to mobilize in order to seek effective alternatives to the stagnation of the ongoing crisis, creating institutions such as IGHA and the Amazonian Academy of letters (AAL). The image of the modern and ostentatious city, equated to “Paris in the middle of the Amazon”, contrasted between the past of Moderna belle époque and the present economic crisis in which a good part of the population lived. Thus, the crisis in the rubber extraction system has become a “privileged research area for a large part of the restricted circle of regional intellectuals, aspiring to occupy a consecrated position within the field of cultural production manauara” (Paiva, 2000, p. 52).

In the meantime, the “scriptural” references ceased to be the worn-out ideology of the belle époque, in exchange for new intellectual and thematic parameters. In this way, the writers of Manaus began to aim, from their publications, to achieve a prominent position in the national intellectual context. This dialogue between the intellectuals of the IGHA and the institutions of knowledge of the south of the country (IHGB, for example) made possible, according to Marco Aurélio De Paiva (2000, p. 128), “the meeting and visibility of a group of intellectuals, natives”, responsible for the emergence of a tradition of regional social thought, drawing the attention of the main capitals of the country to the Amazon.

In addition, the creation of IGHA and AAL, respectively in 1917 and 1918, belatedly compared to other institutions in the rest of the country, was characterized as a strategy “for local oligarchies to establish themselves in some way in the extra-regional scope” (Paiva, 2000, p.49), given the little political influence they exercised in other spatialities besides the Amazon, added with the decline of rubber, in the search region in crisis, and for the city of Manaus in particular, inserting it into new national and international contexts.

It was during this period that there were intense intellectual disputes about the definition of Amazonian regional identity and, in particular, according to Hélio Dantas (2014), from the 1930s onwards, the construction of a canon of authors and works essential to the understanding of the Amazon region, such as A intelectualidade no Extremo Norte (1934), by Anísio Jobim, Intérpretes da Amazônia (1935), by Pericles Moraes, and Letras da Amazônia (1938), by Djalma Batista. It is worth mentioning, however, that even though the IGHA mirrored the theoretical principles of the IHGB, it did not fully accept its doctrines. According to Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, even if the IHGB intended to create a unifying history of the Brazilian nation, the regional problem eventually became an obstacle to the consolidation of such a homogenizing project (Schwarcz, 1993).

The emergence of state institutes, such as IGHA and IHGP, was an imperative to demonstrate the regional specificities existing within the broader framework of making a national history, given that the region lacked to have systematized its history, “solidifying its founding myths, ordering the facts, seeking homogeneities in Heroes and events until then dispersed” (Schwarcz, 1993, p. 129).

Thus, if at the national level one witnessed the configuration of historical and geographical knowledge aimed at the mission of making known the” common past ” of a nation, in addition to awakening the love of the homeland of its citizens, in Pará and Amazonas these knowledges were not constituted in a very different way, insofar as they became vital for the construction of a regional or Amazonian identity, such as occurred in Manaus, based on a positive memory of its people and its heroes, with the institutes being situated as a privileged locus of the intelligentsia of Pará and Amazonas.

The IGHA, founded on March 25, 1917 in the building of the Municipal Council of Manaus, had as its first board the following configuration: President Bernardo de Azevedo da Silva Ramos; Agnello Bittencourt as First Secretary, Henrique Rubim as second secretary; Vivaldo Palma Lima as speaker; Antônio Clemente Ribeiro Bittencourt as treasurer. IGHA emerged, like IHGP, as an “institution created and maintained under the auspices of the state” (Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, Manaus: Tipografia: Secção de Obras da Imprensa Pública, Ano I, Vol. I, 1917a, p.45), since much of the Institute’s revenues came from its sponsorship, following the tradition of the IHGB, at the time of its foundation in Rio de Janeiro, in 1838, with the presence of Dom Pedro II financing and participating in the meetings, and giving 75% of the budget for the operation of the institution (Schwarcz, 1993). In the IGHA, the presence of Governor Pedro de Alcântara Bacellar took place through logistical support, providing a public building for the functioning of the meetings, financing the activities and indicating the administrative body and commissions for the proper functioning.

With regard to the areas and genres of scientific production privileged by the IGHA, they were organized from the 15 commissions provided for in the statute of the institution, making it possible to understand the way in which the various disciplines were perceived by the regional intellectual circle, according to scientific criteria prevailing at the time. The commissions, composed of three members each, represented a political and cultural strategy to enhance the various aspects of the region, until then overshadowed by the “splendor” of the belle époque Amazon during the rubber economy. Thus, it would be up to The History Commission, for example, “to cooperate so that the history of the Amazon is written since the discovery of Brazil, and to collaborate in it, using the means of reissuing all the important and rare works of our history” (Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, Manaus: Tipografia: Secção de Obras da Imprensa Pública, Ano I, Vol. I, 1917a, p. 24-25).

The historians of the IGHA assumed a mission: to think about the city and the region, seeking new ways and representations for the Amazon region in the national and international scenarios. The institute had, therefore, a special function in this process: “to promote the development of the economic wealth of the state, to work for its progress and to defend its rights and interests, thus assisting the action of the public authorities” (Decree No. 1,191, of April 18, 1917, State Government, Manaus, 1917b). The effort of the Amazonian intelligentsia, therefore, meant the construction of an intellectual and symbolic field capable of giving it a voice and elaborating in the plane of culture and letters a new image for the region, tracing new discourses and paths for the Amazon.

Printing the Regional History

When we take the Amazonian historiography as an object of investigation, it is essential to analyze the discourses of Amazonian intellectuals present in the journals of the historical and geographical Institutes of the states of Pará and Amazonas in the first half of the twentieth century, because, as the main vehicle for the dissemination of scientific ideas in the fields of Amazonian history and geography, they built a tradition of thought about the in/the Amazon. In addition, these journals were fundamental for Amazonian historians to disseminate their historical productions, so their narratives gained visibility and institutional support, especially by associating the regional and the national within the discursiveness of the Amazonian historiographic field.

Acting alongside other scientific institutions, such as the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, the Free University of Manaus, the Regional Academies of letters, museums, libraries, educational magazines etc., the journals of the historical institutes (IHGs) operated the broadcasting of a set of representations about the Amazon.

The narratives elaborated by Amazonian historians also collaborated to found a social and scientific thought about the region, contributing to the construction of the Amazonian historiographic field and, consequently, an official ideology about this space, in order to explain the Amazonian social reality and the possible areas of intervention of the central government, historically guilty of the situation of abandonment of the region.

Thus, in these journals, the members printed the understandings about Amazonian history and geography, publishing throughout its pages in the first half of the twentieth century, various materials, works considered important for the history and geography of Pará and the Amazon; biographies of names considered exemplary; rare works to be republished or reviewed; minutes of Sessions; reports of activities carried out by the institution; government reports; conferences given by members; civic tributes to the “great names” of the homeland and Amazonian history; reproduction of historical documents; speeches lectures; historical works; events of a political and/or military nature etc.

According to Pierre Bourdieu (2012, p. 116), the regionalist discourse is a performative discourse, which aims to impose as legitimate a new definition of borders and to make known and recognize the region thus delimited, and is based on the materiality and knowledge of the group to which it is addressed, that is, on the recognition and belief attributed to it by the members of the group. O Amazonian regionalism, however, it was not an isolated case, since it was in the first half of the twentieth century that the construction of the regional identity of Rio Grande do Sul (gauchismo), Minas Gerais (mineiridade), São Paulo (bandeirantismo), Paraná (Paranismo), and the Northeast (northeastern regionalism) occurred (Pereira, 1996, p. 49-50).

Regional history, therefore, as a result of a symbolic-identity project, was characterized as an unfolding of national history and developed in various parts of Brazil, in smaller proportions. By using regionalism as an object of struggle and representation, therefore, Pará and Amazonian intellectuals declared a dispute for social and intellectual places at the local and national levels, that is, they defined hierarchies, visibilities and articulations with the instances of power, in the search to deconstruct the image of a “foreign body” to the nation, which historically was attributed to the Amazon region.

With the founding of the main historical institutes of the Amazon region, magazines became official vehicles for the dissemination of historical and geographical narratives considered legitimate. The journal of the Amazonas Institute, for example, proposed to be: the “repository of scientific reports and studies, of a geographic and historical nature, related to Brazil, especially this State” (Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, Manaus: Tipografia: Secção de Obras da Imprensa Pública. Ano I, Vol. I, 1917a, p. 3). Although there have already been Works published about the Amazon region, before the research carried out by the members of the historical institutes, in fact it was about:

Sparse works, without the scientific criteria of modern research processes. The Statesman, the physician, the naturalist, all in short, feel embarrassed in the solution of questions that are linked to the Amazonian “habitat”. Some of these productions, deficient in some points, are wrong in others, which argues the difficulties of research, when, most of the time, they do not confirm the calumny that weighs on our climate and the state of our civilization. Moreover, Geography and History have definitively acquired the speculative expression, which is not found in these old travel narratives or in The Chronicles of the facts to which our ancestors were linked

(Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, Manaus: Tipografia: Secção de Obras da Imprensa Pública. Ano I, Vol. I, 1917a, p. 3-4).

Thus, it expressed the reaffirmation of a process of disciplinary specialization and the construction of an Amazonian historiographic field, in the wake of the process of institutionalization of history, established with the creation of the historical and geographical Institutes of Pará and Amazonas, the two oldest in the region. The publications in the journals assumed a fundamental role as a disseminating element of the discourses of the historians gathered around the two institutes, positioning themselves as the main means of institutional visibility at local, regional, national and international levels. The articles became the main indicator of Amazonian historiographic production in the first half of the twentieth century, given the importance of the intellectuals who were in their circles, attesting to the legitimacy of the narratives, protected by the golden mean of scientificity.

It was at this juncture that Brazil witnessed the process of disciplinarization of history as a science and the emergence of a fundamental literary genre, the sociological or historical essay. Several works of historical interpretation of Brazil were published in that context, in the search for understanding formative aspects of Brazilian society and its contemporary reality. In a climate of social and intellectual effervescence, the position of the “men of letters” in the country was questioned and the importance of these to expose their ideas and interpretations about the present and future of Brazil, in the face of the scenario of structural changes that occurred.

The Brazilian historiography of the first Republican decade was marked, on the one hand, by the positivist conception of the historical method, heir to the debates and publications carried out in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe and received in Brazil; on the other, by the influence of Capistrano de Abreu and his revisionist historiography. However, according to Astor Diehl (1998), the historiography built in Brazil from the 1920s assimilated the various changes emerging from the political, social, economic and cultural fields coming from abroad and from the main centers of historical production in the country, and influenced the forms of representation of Brazilian reality.

In addition, the intellectual and historiographical Productions stimulated the members of the Brazilian elite to reflect on national and regional realities and free themselves from the deterministic bias of the second half of the nineteenth century, elaborating “new perspectives of analysis through scientific objectivity” (Diehl, 1998. p. 155). With this, the construction of the National State was aimed at, through the break of the old oligarchies still reigning of the “Old Republic”, to be replaced by a new elite, composed of men of science.

If on the European stage, especially in France and Germany, history had been catching up status since the nineteenth century with the creation of European universities, in Brazil this project was carried out at the university level late, only from the 1930s, with the creation of courses in geography and history in the Faculties of Philosophy, Sciences and letters, like the courses of the Universidade de São Paulo, created in 1934. In this context, a strong criticism of the role of history and the social function of the historian is established, that is, the way in which the discipline was produced, disseminated and taught by the positivist methodical School of the nineteenth century, which privileged, according to José Carlos Reis (1994), the study of political events, in addition to the role of powerful men, which allowed the foundation of another writing of history.

In addition, the new historiographical theories coming in the 1930s in the cultural missions with scholars such as Fernand Braudel, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roger Bastide, Henri Hauser and Eugène Albertini, built new theoretical and methodological foundations in Brazil, criticizing the bases of traditional positivist thought and sought new interpretations for national history, now based on the search for the roots of Brazilian culture.

Brazilian historiography from the 1920s to the 1940s was also marked by a generation of historians and social scientists who inherited the confluence between the aesthetic and ideological projects of the modernist movement, which resulted in the search for new themes, new sources, revaluation of the Brazilian theme, the Brazilian man and the integration of Brazilian history into general history, such as the research carried out by Gilberto Freire, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Caio Prado Júnior. According to Astor Diehl, from the 1920s onwards in Brazil, historiography was positioned in two different theoretical-methodological orientations: on the one hand, the historiographical culture is that of sociologist historians, who, influenced by modernist ideas, gradually replaced factual history with an interpretative history of the Brazilian nation, as in the works of Oliveira Vianna Evolução do povo brasileiro, 1923; Paulo Prado, Retrato do Brasil, 1928; Caio Prado Júnior, Evolução política do Brasil, 1933; Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, 1936.

On the other hand, there was a traditional story événementielle, where the following themes were privileged:

The history of territorial occupation, the administrative history, the economic history of certain products, such as, for example, sugar, coffee, gold and diamonds; the history of institutions, such as the Society of Jesus, the army; the history of moments and tensions, such as the coming of the court, the independence of Brazil, among other topics; the abolition of slavery; the biographies of the great personalities of the Empire; the revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the urbanization process

(Reis, 1994, p.175).

The Amazonian historiography of the first half of the twentieth century was closer to this second strand of historical interpretation, still very present in the Brazilian historical and Geographical Institute and in its state counterparts, such as IGHA and IHGP, especially at the intersection between regional and national history. The historians of the Amazon produced in that context numerous works of a sociological or historical nature, trying to establish new interpretations about the Amazon and build and disseminate an official history of the region still quite unknown and considered distant from the center-south of the country.

According to Jefferson Teles Martins (2015), the essays category comprises all works that do not have a literary nature of fiction, and follow “rigorous” methodical research precepts, such as monographs or historical, geographical, sociological, genealogical, folkloric studies, biographies, etc. It is also characterized by the effort to interpret national or regional realities, gaining evidence in the Amazon with the foundation of historical and geographical institutes, considered as “centers of scientific culture” in the region (Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, Sessão de Obras da Imprensa Pública, Manaus, 1917b, p. 59). And the IGHA and IHGP magazines, as the materialization of the activities carried out by intellectuals, played a fundamental role in this process, standing out as organizing and disseminating spaces for the historiographical narratives published by the institutes and solidifying an official history in the Amazon.

Founding narratives: the search for the origins of the Amazon

The first three editions of the IHGP magazine, published in 1900, brought, along with the commemorative speeches of the fourth centenary of the discovery of Brazil, a picture entitled Monografias Paraenses: os exploradores da Amazônia. In it, Arthur Vianna, one of the founding members of IHGP and the Paraense Academy of Letters (APL)³, published a long article with the same title, during the three editions (volumes I, II and III). In this article, the Pará historian sought to found the bases of the history of the Amazon, analyzing the main theories about the process of colonization and discovery of the Amazon River. Thus, carrying out a historical analysis of the various theories presented by French historians about the possible Greco-Phoenician presence in the Amazon Valley, Vianna leans towards documentation, stating that “history requires, in order to subsist, more solid data” (Vianna, 1900a, v. 1, p. 48).

This author brought a series of collaborations to the history of Pará, publishing a set of works that helped solidify in the first Republican decades the historiographical field of the region. The reading practice of European theorists and the experience as director of the library and public archive of the state of Pará prepared him to rethink the history of the region, bringing numerous contributions, such as the organization, according to Magda Ricci, of one of the largest collections of books and documents in the Amazon region, being a fundamental author, alongside João de Palma Muniz and Henrique Santa Rosa, for the new “Republican historiographic turn in Pará” (Ricci, 2014, p. 19).

Thus, throughout the works, when discussing the historical formation of the Amazon, Arthur Vianna outlines a new place for the region in the history of Brazil, making it central, especially Pará, in the process of exploration of this territory. Contrary, therefore, to the French theories of colonization of the Amazon, he attributes in his works and in the article already mentioned, a prominent place to the Spaniards, dedicating, in an innovative way, to these, and not to the Portuguese, the title of first discoverers of the Amazon, and therefore of Brazil, as we can see in the following narrative:

The flotilla always sailed within sight of land and arrived on April 5, 1500, at a cape that Pinson named São Vicente [...] this being the last land of Brazil discovered by the daring sailor. This is, in summary, the discovery of the lands of Pará, which tradition has recorded; Vicente Pinson thus obtained the double glory of appearing in the fastos geraes of Brazil and in the particular history of Pará, as its true discoverer; in the face of chronology, his trip forms the first milestone in Brazilian history

(Vianna, 1900a, v. 1, p. 51).

The search for the origins of the Amazon has become a frequent practice among Amazonian historians in this context, and historical narratives, with their scientific content, have become essential for the construction of a common past that unites in a single place the main events of this part of the country. In addition, the search for the origins reveals the intention to forge the history of the Amazon itself, integrating it into the history of the nation, since for a long time, until at least the process of Pará’s accession to independence in 1823, this area of the Amazon was not part of the history of Brazil, since it was separated from the country and directly linked to Portugal, it was the state of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro.

The founding narratives and origin myths served as beacons for the institutionalization of a value system that sought to forge an official history for the Amazon region in the quest to magnify it in the history of the nation, and at the same time build an identity for the region. In this case, the identity under construction was strongly linked to European values, and, although the Portuguese had not been the first to set foot on Amazonian soil, they were, according to Arthur Vianna, responsible for the civilization of local indigenous peoples, through Jesuit catechization, and, according to this author, there was exploitation and tension in the colonization process, which demonstrated a new reading of luso-tropicalist narratives regarding Amazonian colonization in this context.

The narratives, based on a traditional historiography, sought to build an epic imaginary of adventures, recreating for the reader the images of the expeditions and the “acts of heroism and bravery” played by the characters. Thus, when describing the scenes of the colonization of Pará, for example, Vianna talks in detail about the events, as we can see in the following quote:

[...] Conquering Maranhão from the French, Alexandre de Moura organized the expedition destined to the conquest and colonization of Pará, and gave him captain Francisco Caldeira Castello Branco as head. The expeditionary troop embarked on December 25, 1615, in a caravel, a ketch and a launch [...] Always following the coast [...] the expedition reached the mouth of the Tocantins [...] they skirted the island of Mosqueiro and, after passing through the bay of Santo Antonio, entered the bay of Guajará. The tupinambás showed themselves peaceful and determined to help the Portuguese [...] inviting travelers to disembark. [... Without the resources to build a good fortification, he limited himself to making the fort of wood, which received the name of Presepio[...], thus laying the humble foundations of the settlement of Nossa Senhora de Belém, which he placed under the patronage of Nossa Senhora da Graça, venerated in a small chapel, erected within the fort

(Vianna, 1900b, v. III, p. 289-291).

Thus, the history of the foundation of Belém elaborated by Vianna, was characterized as a description, a sequenced, chronological and aggrandizing narrative of the events present in the documentation. Highlighting the “heroes” of colonization, Vianna highlights the “deeds” of characters such as Francisco Caldeira Castello Branco and Pedro Teixeira, showing their attitudes towards the colonization project. Thus, when narrating the expeditions commanded by Pedro Teixeira, for example, he presents the facts in a way that monumentalizes this character, stating that: “This same Teixeira, who had already rendered such important services and would still render so many, in order to live up to the position of most prominent hero in the conquest of Pará, had the glory of being the first to penetrate the beautiful Tapajós” (Vianna, 1900b, v. III, p. 299).

Manuel Braga Ribeiro, historian of the IHGP, also highlights in his speech celebrating the death of Pedro Teixeira, read in a session of the IHGP in 1919, and published in its magazine in 1920, the Adventures of this character, who, according to him, “crossed the first five decades of our colonial history always praised by the nobility of his actions and the glory of his exploits” (Ribeiro, 1920, p. 263). Thus, Pedro Teixeira personified this place of hero, representing a mythical character from the colonizing expedition in the Amazon, reminding us of the attachment of Amazonian historians to the history magistra vitae, with History having to immortalize the subjects who could serve as a “source of examples for life” (Koselleck, 2006, p. 42).

Other colonizing narratives became present in IHGP magazines in the first half of the twentieth century. Theodoro Braga⁴, for example, in an article published in the 1932 edition, entitled “matters of the history of Pará”, he sought to clarify some “still obscure points around the historical beginning of the city of Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão Pará”, as we can observe below:

The first concerns the date of the arrival of the Portuguese expedition to the Pará River, under the command of Captain-Major Francisco Caldeira De Castello Branco, with the predetermined end of the immediate and effective foundation of the nucleus for the headquarters and captaincy of Grão Pará. The second refers to the coming of religious elements being an integral part of the aforementioned expedition in an official capacity, in order to help the souls of the expeditioners and to catechize the Foresters of the region to which the colonizing expedition was coming

(Braga, 1932, p. 81).

In the article, the historian from Pará, a founding member of the IHGP, seeks to defend his thesis that the foundation of Belém would have occurred on April 12, 1616, seeking to reaffirm, from the presentation of a document that, according to him, would put to rest all speculative theories about the foundation of the “guajarina city, capital of Pará”. The document referred to a “letter dated Lisbon on September 4, 1616 and written by the archbishop of Lisbon, then governing the viceroyalty of Portugal, to D. Luiz De Souza” (Braga, 1932, p. 82), and where the date of the foundation of the city of Belém do Grão Pará by captain-mór Francisco Caldeira de Castelo Branco would be clarified, remaining only to locate “the original of the letter of this Captain, dated April 12, 1616, and where the head of the journey gives an account of his arrival at the Pará River and the consequent foundation of the fortress” (Braga, 1932, p. 85).

There was, therefore, a battle between Pará historians in the search to build the roots of the history of Pará, and in this fight, the historians who best presented their arguments based on documents, and the result of long research in regional, national and International Archives, would win. The Amazonian historiographic field was also formed from its internal disputes, because as Pierre Bourdieu (2012) points out, the fields are formed by subjects and institutions that are involved in a zone of forces and struggles, whose disputes for places and knowledge are found in this zone. In the case of Theodoro Braga, he mentions having found the aforementioned documentation in the Paulista Museum, with the help of Affonso Taunay, a historiographical affiliation that served to legitimize his arguments. Regarding the presence or not of religious in the expedition of Castello Branco, Theodoro Braga states that:

It is inconceivable that an expedition of the value and scope of the one commanded by Francisco Caldeira De Castello Branco, who came to Pará in order to remain definitively in the conservation and defense of the square that was to be founded, would fail to bring, as one of the primordial elements, a religious even with the duty to assist the expeditioners and soon after to take care of the jungle trees with which they were going to treat the new colonizers

(Braga, 1932, p. 85).

Theodoro Braga sought, therefore, to elaborate a new version of the founding events of the capital of Pará, deconstructing old theories about the history of the Amazon. The work of rewriting the history of the region became even more evident in 1908 with the presentation, by Theodoro Braga, of the historical painting A Fundação da cidade de Nossa Senhora de Belém do Pará, as this artist revised some already established theories about the foundation of the capital of Pará, such as the representation of the nativity scene fort in stone, and not in wood, as defended by other historians, such as Arthur Vianna: “Without resources to build a good fortification, he (Francisco Caldeira de Castelo Branco) limited himself to making the fort out of wood, which was given the name of Presepio, in memory of the day the expeditionaries left for their honorable enterprise” (Vianna, 1900b, v. III, p. 289-291).

In addition, with his canvas, Theodoro Braga sought to draw another image for the Amazon, and for this project it would be necessary, according to Aldrin Figueiredo, “to break some currents and opinions on various topics that are linked to the foundation of the city of Belém” (Figueiredo, 2001, p. 89).

According to Figueiredo, the painting of Theodoro Braga’s canvas, together with the publication of the explanatory booklet of the image, by this artist, represented the effort of the painter-historian in solidifying an Amazonian identity, because, “as a kind of embryonic episode, the portrait of the foundation of Belém was, by itself and for this very reason, a founding myth of national identity in the Amazon” (Figueiredo, 2001, p. 87). Figueiredo considers that Theodoro Braga rewrote history through painting, as he revised Ancient Writings and re-presented a narrative in a pictorial image, since the narrative of the foundation of Brazil went through the history of the birth of the capital of Pará.

The fact that he had placed two religious in the founding scene, by virtue of Theodoro Braga’s peers defending the thesis that the first religious would have arrived in Belém only in October 1618, he being Father Manuel Figueirôa de Mendonça, this historian, through the presentation of a long document in the body of his article, intended to legitimize his narrative about the foundation. The document was a “annual payroll, made in Brazil, of the respective fees, congrues and salaries to the functionaries of justice, finance, religious and military throughout Brazil, by captaincy” (Braga, 1932, p. 86).

To Theodoro Braga, the “transparent clarity of the cited documents”, confirms that everything happened before the arrival of the aforementioned priest, in October 1618, he was not, therefore, according to this historian, the first religious arrived in Belém do Grão Pará. Presented the documents, “they are not worth comments” (Braga, 1932, p. 89), that is, to Theodoro Braga, with regard to the foundation of Belém, the positivist maxim” the documents speak for themselves “is valid, that is, history” exists in itself, objectively, and offers itself through the documents” (Reis, 1996, p. 13).

From the IGHA, manauaras historians also sought the historical roots of the region, highlighting the main events that exalted its precursors. In the article entitled “Ajuricaba”, for example, published by revista do IGHA in 1932, authored by professor Manoel de Miranda Leão, partner of IGHA, dedicated to partner Arthur Cezar Ferreira Reis⁵, the mixed foundational narrative is observed, with the heroicization of the indigenous figure as a mark of nationality and the search for the historical past of the region transmitted in positivist language, as we can observe in the following narrative:

Ajuricaba is the maximum exponent of Amazonian glory. Everything reveals him as a manly man: his manly energy, his heroic fearlessness, his haughty and independent character. Everything about him exalts the patriot: his love for his race, his affection for his native land, his civic spirit that unifies him with his nation. He is a role model, he is an example. In the phraseology of a talented writer – he was Ajuricaba – the only Amazonian of the colonial eras, who, covered in glory, surpassed the thresholds of legend; we, however, certify that he was the only indigenous chief – who with pride and courage, best knew how to honor his race and glorify his native land – the Rio Negro

(Leão, 1932, p. 5).

The narrative of partner Manoel de Miranda Leão seeks to answer a historical dispute of memory built about the” legendary hero ” of the Amazon colonization, the Indigenous warrior Ajuricaba, and recalls the episode of the Portuguese wars against the Manao Indians during the first half of the eighteenth century. According to Décio Guzmán, this ” episode of the conflicts between the Manao Indians and the Portuguese was crystallized in the historiography of the beginning of the century”, and stands out in the official narratives of IGHA intellectuals as a “founding episode of the colonial occupation of the Rio negro in the eighteenth century (Guzmán, 1997, p. 123). A História do Amazonas, by Arthur Cesar Ferreira Reis, published in 1931, a year before the text by Manoel de Miranda Leão, brings in one of its chapters this defense by the”Amazonian indigenous hero”, and has become one of the representative works of the principles of the IGHA at this time, written based on some methodological assumptions of the IHGB, especially with regard to patriotism and civility.

In the chapter also titled Ajuricaba, originally published in Redemption Magazine, in Manaus on June 27, 1931, and republished in the same year in his work História do Amazonas, Arthur Reis, dialoguing based on royal letters, travel diaries, official documents, Annals of the Library and Public Archive of Pará, and the document prepared by the abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco about the boundaries between Brazil and Guyana published in 1903 “Question des limites du Brésil et de la Guyane anglaise. Soumise à l’arbitrage de Sa Majesté le Roi d’italie”, reaffirms the heroic construction of Ajuricaba, defending him from the accusation of being a traitor allied with the Dutch. According to the Amazonian historian:

Was Ajuricaba, who headed the Manaus, against whom such hostile measures were being taken in Suriname, an ally of the Dutch? The accusation, it is understood, was arranged so that in Portugal there would be easy approval for the war, desired, almost demanded by the backwoodsmen and merchants, prevented from making large profits while the Manaus were in arms. “Ajuricaba,” wrote Joaquim Nabuco, ” is a name entirely unknown to the Dutch, their would-be allies. [...] The accusation was the best that the greedy traffickers could employ to obtain the Royal authorization for their wars of enslavement; therefore they raised it”. [...] Swore [...] [he was] “a hero among the Indians”, waiting, according to legend, even today, among his Manaus, for redemption of the race, was thus an illustrious warrior, among the first to battle for freedom in America. This is the title to which he is entitled

(Reis, 1931, p. 102).

Thus, Arthur Reis (re)invents the image of the Manao indigenous warrior, reworking the version about the conflict between the Manao Indians and the Portuguese. According to Décio Alencar Guzmán (1997), this reinterpretation elaborated by the intellectuals of the IGHA at the beginning of the century, and especially by Arthur Reis, is associated with an influence of Brazilian romantic Indianism in the Amazonian historiography of the 1930s, through which the origins of Amazonian man will be solidified. Through this movement, the members of IGHA would be carrying out a double mission in regional historiography: to highlight the Portuguese victory, and to rescue the civic origins of the Amazonian man, in this case represented by Ajuricaba as a native man of the region.

Also, according to Guzmán, the conflict between the Manao Indians and the Portuguese represents a “founding episode of the colonial occupation of the rio negro in the eighteenth century” (Guzmán, 1997, p. 123). Thus, Reis’ intention was not only to elevate the heroic image of Ajuricaba, but through this heroic narrative to emphasize the “Portuguese conquest on the Rio Negro”, valuing the efforts of the conquering Europeans, in a clear allusion to the praise of Portuguese colonization in the region. The Amazonian historian, therefore, interprets the events of the first half of the eighteenth century influenced by a positivist, romantic historiography in Indianist and nationalist terms, matrices still present in the frames of the IGHA, IHGP and IHGB of the first half of the twentieth century.

The colonizing narratives became even more present in the magazines of IGHA, on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the elevation of the old town of Manaus to the category of city, with the name of city of Barra do Rio Negro (1848-1948). In this endeavor, manauaras historians, such as Anísio Jobim and Agnello Bittencourt⁶, committed themselves to writing the history of the founding of Manaus, seeking the origins of this city, in an attempt to reaffirm the importance of this place for the history of the Amazon and the history of Brazil. Following the example of IHGP historians, Jobim and Bittencourt, from Manaus, sought to build epic and aggrandizing narratives of the colonization process, describing the founding events of Manaus as true odysseys carried out by its colonizers, as we can see in the following narrative:

The discovery of the Rio Negro is due to Francisco de Orelana, one of the great captains of the expedition of Gonçalo Pizarro, who left Quito, Peru, on Christmas 1539, in search of the country of cinnamon and Gold. [...] Ahead they faced a river of strange breadth and great depth – the Marañon, whose whirling current they descended curious and admiring. On June 3, 1542, they passed through the mouth of the Rio Negro, and consequently Orelana was its discoverer [...]. A century later, the great captain Pedro Teixeira was in the Bay of Rio Negro. Ahead, at the river mouth of the Nhamundá, fate reserved a surprise for them. Manly women created the brigantines of arrows in close combat. Such was Orelana’s astonishment that the river that had originally received its name, - Orelana river, now began to be called, a name given by himself, evoking the warrior women of Asia, River of the Amazons

(Jobim, 1948, p. 7-8)

In this case, a founding myth is staged, where Paraense and Amazonian historians fixed the meanings of Amazonian colonization, monumentalizing it in the history of the nation. According to Marilena Chauí, foundation, unlike formation, refers to an imaginary past moment, conceived as an original instant that remains alive and present in the course of time, seeking to establish it beyond time, outside history, in a present that never ceases, since “a founding myth is one that does not cease to find new means to express itself, new languages, new values and ideas, in such a way that, the more it seems to be something else, the more it is the repetition of itself” (Chauí, 2000, p. 9-10).

Final remarks

From the reflections made above, we observe that the history constructed by both IGHA and IHGP historians in the first half of the twentieth century, consisted of narratives of events, which privileged the history of political and military events present in the documentation, taking the sources as discourses considered impartial and objective. Historians would only have the mission of rescuing the documents, in a passive way, taking them as truth about the events, not as an indication of the past lived.

The historians of IGHA and IHGP sought to build and legitimize their narratives as official, demarcating the regional historiographic field and the Amazonian intellectual identity, consolidating the intellectual circles of the region and the integration of these to the national historiography. Thus, the intellectuals of the IHGP and IGHA sought to build an association that would bring Amazonian narratives to the framework of national historiography, establishing them as fundamental for the “knowledge of regional events, as a contribution from Pará to Brazilian Historiography” (Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Pará, 1939-1951. Vol. XII).

Thus, the writing of the history elaborated by these historians, while establishing a ground zero for the history of the region, founding the dates, facts and main characters of Amazonian history, also instituted their own history, as official historians of local narratives, establishing the IGHA and the IHGP as authorized spaces of speech about the foundation of the region. The history of the Amazon elaborated by them, however, was carried out according to historicist methods, privileging traditional sources and narratives, fruits of a “glorious” past, full of great men and great deeds, manufacturing the heroes of local history, in the search of instituting the examples for the readers.

The historians of IGHA and IHGP systematically reiterated, throughout the texts of the magazines, their founding narratives in order to make them true by the practice of repetition, reaffirming the origins of a region that aspired to be great in the history of Brazil and, for this reason, needed a legendary and immortal origin. When they founded the history of the Amazon, they also founded the historians of the region, establishing the intellectual circles that would be responsible for raising Pará and the Amazon beyond regional and national borders.

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• 1
  The official nomenclature is Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas, IGHA, unlike most historical institutes emerging in Brazil at this time, which brought history before geography.
• 2
  Sérgio Miceli uses the term “polygraph” to describe the intellectual who performed several tasks at the same time and was also dedicated to activities related to the world of letters, producing historical, literary, journalistic works, etc. See: MICELI, S. Intelectuais à brasileira. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001.
• 3
  Arthur Otavio Nobre Vianna, born in Belém do Pará (1873-1911), graduated in Pharmacy from the School of Pharmacy of Pará.
• 4
  Theodoro José da Silva Braga, a native of Belém (1872-1953), graduated in law from the Faculty of Law of Recife, and from the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro.
• 5
  Arthur Cezar Ferreira Reis, born in Manaus (1906-1993), graduated in Law from the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of Rio de Janeiro. An Amazonian historian, he was the second largest contributor to the General History of Brazilian civilization organized by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in the 1970s, and the author of almost fifty books on the history of the Amazon. See: DANTAS, Hélio. Arthur Cézar Ferreira Reis: trajetória intelectual e escrita da história. Jundiaí, Paco Editorial: 2014.
• 6
  Manuel Anísio Jobim, born in Anadia, State of Alagoas (1879-1971), graduated in legal and Social Sciences from the Faculty of Law of Recife. Agnello Uchôa Bittencourt, a native of Amazonas (1876-1975), served as a geographer, historian and journalist, was one of the founders and president of IGHA during the years 1931 to 1950.
• Funding
  Not applicable.
• Ethics Committee approval
  Not applicable.
• Evaluation
  Double-blind peer review.
• Research context
  The article derives from the thesis “Entre a nação e a região: os institutos históricos e geográficos do Pará e do Amazonas na escrita da História do Brasil, a partir da Amazônia (1917-1953)” (“Between the nation and the region: the historical and geographical institutes of Pará and Amazonas in the writing of the History of Brazil, from the Amazon (1917-1953)”), supervised by Professors Aldrin Moura de Figueiredo and Magda Maria de Oliveira Ricci. Universidade Federal do Pará (Federal University of Pará), Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Postgraduate Program in History, Belém, 2023.
• Preprint
  The article is not a preprint.
• Availability of research data and other materials
  Not applicable.

Edited by

• Responsible Editors
  Rebeca Gontijo – Editor-in-Chief

• Responsible Editors
  Martha Rodriguez – Executive editor

Data availability

Not applicable.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 July 2025
• Date of issue
  2025

History

• Received
  31 Aug 2023
• Accepted
  4 June 2024
• Reviewed
  22 May 2024