The historical perspective on agriculture requires the analysis of diverse documentation that is scattered in archives and libraries in Europe and in the world. What are the most relevant sources of research focused on the Iberian Peninsula, especially between the 18th and 19th centuries? This is a key issue for ReSEED that received an important contribution from the panel “Agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula: sources for a long-term history”, organized by the project’s Principal Investigator, Dulce Freire at the 38th meeting of the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History (APHES).
The panel took place on November 17, 2018, at the Faculdade de Letras – ULisboa (Faculty of Letters – University of Lisbon) with the theme “Gender in Economic and Social History”. Moderated by Jaime Reis (Instituto de Ciências Sociais – ULisboa), it counted on the following papers:
“Seeds that germinate: the scientific projects illustrated by D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho”
José Luis Cardoso (Instituto de Ciências Sociais – ULisboa)“The sources for the History of agriculture and forest in the Spanish 19th Century”
Juan Pan-Montojo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) & Juan Infante Amante (Universidad Pablo de Olavide -Sevilla)“On the trail of naturalists. Botanical collections and publications in the 18th and 19th centuries”
Dulce Freire (Instituto de Ciências Sociais – ULisboa)
The panel highlighted one of the great challenges for ReSEED: how to build a robust empirical basis for the entire historical period covered by the research? The papers presented provided valuable insights into the relevant historical documentation for the 18th and 19th centuries. However, they made clear some of the difficulties that the team will face.
If a historical analysis showed that since the 18th century Iberian states produced similar documents on agriculture, it also gave evidence that many of them, which would be of interest to the project, are accessible for the Spanish regions, but not for the Portuguese ones. For the latter, some documents are missing and several others have been closed in public archives for decades – or even centuries – without access due to lack of organization. How will the ReSEED team overcome these obstacles? The discussion and the process of “building the sources” have just begun.
ReSEED at the 38th meeting of the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History.
