Journeys of the modern conception of history: Capistrano de Abreu's Necrológio de Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's O pensamento histórico no Brasil nos últimos cinquenta anos revisited

Abstract

This article seeks to reflect on the tensions internal to the modern conception of history through two important texts concerning Brazilian historiography and the writing of Brazilian history: Capistrano de Abreu's Necrológio de Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1878) and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's O pensamento histórico no Brasil nos últimos cinquenta anos (1951). Considering both in the light of the modern conception of history, as representatives of a new experience of time, characterized by the difference towards the past, and by a new horizon of expectations about the future, which changes the way history is written, we see them both marked by tensions such as particular studies and synthesis, theory and empirical work, objectivity and subjectivity, still relevant to historians.