摘要：The practice of book reviews unfortunately has very few roots as yet in Portuguese academic circles. There have been many important works that have had no critical reviews at all. The realization that my recent book on Dom José was afforded a critical analysis less than a year after its publication, and what is more in a review written by António Hespanha, to whom I am connected by so many ties, is something that therefore gives me cause for celebration. The fact that his commentary is centered on only one of the book’s dimensions, that it is made in parallel with a commentary on another work, written by José Subtil, and that it has as its fundamental axis the criticism of some of the theses that I put forward, discussed in opposition to those of the other work being reviewed, in no way diminishes my satisfaction. In his preamble, Hespanha notes that, whereas Subtil is influenced by Foucault and Bourdieu and “leans more towards a symbolic-oriented narrative”, I myself am “more given to an (enriched) “social history” approach”. Without forsaking my right to be included in the social history tradition, I cannot fail to be surprised by this commentary. In fact, the influence of Pierre Bourdieu’s work (or a part of it) and even the obstacles resulting therefrom have been accurately underlined in a review that was made of my past work1. Furthermore, it does not seem to me that Hespanha gave due importance to some essays by this author written precisely about modern state building2, a theme that, after all, partly conditions what is under discussion here.
