摘要：The founding team, which also composes the group of editors of the e-Journal of Portuguese History decided to celebrate the journal's tenth year of existence by organizing a colloquium where some key issues in Portuguese History could be revisited. The idea was to make it happen in an American university since that would present an opportunity to bring those issues to the English-speaking world, particularly through the ensuing publication of the papers. The goal was to revisit some key topics of the most important periods of Portuguese history. It was also decided to dedicate a closing session to four significant books on Portuguese themes by Anglo-American historians. However, given the fact that it was a colloquium to take place in an English-speaking country, it seemed fitting to find a venue to honor some Anglo-American historians who have devoted significant parts of their careers to the study of Portuguese history. This, it was thought, would be best done through the dedication of a special session of the colloquium to their works. An agreement was easily reached on the authors: Charles Boxer, Peter E. Russell, A. J. R. Russell-Wood, and Kenneth Maxwell, four lusophile historians whose writings have greatly contributed to the understanding of Portuguese history not only in the English-speaking world but also in the Lusophone world. Of course, when a list of this kind includes a figure of the statue of Charles Boxer, whose scholarly breadth covers centuries, any attempt of assessing his work becomes an impossible task. To complicate matters, Russell-Wood's writings also, though to a much lesser degree, covered various centuries. The same holds for Maxwell, who started as an historian of the Enlightenment but later moved to twentieth-century topics. It was then agreed that the revisitation should focus on one single book of each author
