The making of the history of the New State. A conversation with Fernando Rosas

Abstract

Fernando Rosas is a full professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at the New University of Lisbon. He was until recently president of the Institute of Contemporary History and is also known for his political activism. However, before becoming a historian, Rosas already had a political past in the opposition to the Estado Novo, first in the Portuguese Communist Party and then, closer to the 25th April, in the MRPP (Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado). He performed several militant tasks, among them journalism. After the PREC (Revolutionary Process in Course), he remained a member of the MRPP until the end of the seventies. More than a formal interview, I tried to establish a conversation with Fernando Rosas, not discussing his historiographical work in an excessively conceptual manner, but rather taking advantage of his career as a historian to raise historiographical questions, and simultaneously question the historiographical field in Portugal from the 1970s to the present day.