Ramiz Galvão, historian and librarian: Practices and places of historiographical production in Brazil from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

This paper takes the issues proposed by Michel de Certeau in his text “The Historiographical Operation” to analyze the writing of Brazil’s history between the 1870’s and the 1930’s. A particular intellectual of this period, Benjamin Franklin Ramiz Galvão, will be our guide for this analysis. Although he does not currently hold a central position in the pantheon of national historians, at his time Ramiz Galvão was a key-intellectual and a reference for his work in several knowledge institutions during the imperial and republican periods, such as the Brazilian Institute of History and Geography and the National Library. By analyzing his performance in these institutions, we seek to highlight two aspects: first, how the task of writing a past for Brazilian nation in the transition from the 19^th century to the 20^th century encompassed several practices, agents and places; and second, how he is representative of a change in the rules of historiographical modus operandi. This change helps us understand why he holds a position in the discipline memory.