In this article the author reconstructs the relations between academic historians in Argentina and the new contributions made by the social sciences during a period spanning from the mid 19th century, with the publication of Historia de Belgrano (1857) by Bartolomé Mitre, to the end of the First World War, when the so-called New Historical School began to control the discipline in the university following the 1918 University Reform. To this end, the text pays special attention to the ways in which the local debate in Argentina appropriated the proposals of positivist European historiography, such as the work of H. Taine, concentrating on the following authors: Bartolomé Mitre, Vicente Fidel López, José María Ramos Mejía, Ernesto Quesada, Augustín García, Juan Álvarez and Paul Groussac.
Argentine historiography; Positivist historiography; Social sciences