Editors: Hebe Mattos (UFJF), Sebastien Rozeaux (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès), Sílvia Capanema (Sorbonne Paris Nord)

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This special issue proposes a historiographical reflection on the theoretical and methodological approaches to writing a “popular history” of Brazil from the colonial era to the present day. Article proposals should offer methodological insights in dialogue with the subject matter and field of research, highlighting subalternized social actors as well as dimensions of race, gender, class, etc.

Submission Deadline: July 31, 2026

This dossier is part of the research project “Toward a Popular History of Latin America” (funded by the Institut des Amériques, Labex SMS, and the Framespa research laboratory at the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, as well as the Pléiade laboratory at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University). Through the organization of meetings and study days, the ultimate goal of the project, coordinated by Franck Gaudichaud, Sébastien Rozeaux, and Sílvia Capanema, is to produce a collective work that proposes the writing of a popular history of Latin America from the colonial era to the present day.
In this sense, with this dossier we seek to spark a debate on what it would mean to write a popular history of Brazil, focusing on social and racial relations over the long term, from the formation of a colonial society in Portuguese America, including its reconfigurations and evolutions in the contemporary era. Our intention is to rethink the history of Brazil by adopting the perspective of subalternized actors: workers, the working classes, Indigenous peoples, migrants, enslaved people, Black people, peasants, and racialized and marginalized individuals.
The writing of “popular histories” has become a new historiographical phenomenon in Europe, following the widespread reception of Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States (a book published in 1980 but translated into other languages, such as French, only beginning in the 2000s). In France, two recent books have shaped the historiographical debate and sparked new publications: *Les Luttes et des rêves : une histoire populaire de la France* (2016), by Michelle Zancarini Fournel, and *Une histoire populaire de la France*, by Gérard Noiriel (2019).
In Latin America, the approach explicitly framed as “a people’s history” or “a history of the people” did not have the same impact. In Brazil, in particular, Zinn’s book was not even translated. However, as we know, the perspective of “history from below” has been and continues to be extensively developed in the country, in various ways, largely drawing on the works of Edward P. Thompson or Eric Hobsbawm. More recently, decolonial approaches or those taking into account the concept of subalternized subjects have guided various studies.
But how might we conceive of producing a popular history—or a history of the people—of Brazil from the perspective of Brazilian historiography? What are the recent contributions and approaches? What are the challenges? What issues are specific to the country? How should we address territorial extent and cultural diversity in a journal dossier or other publications that seek to highlight the people? How can we remain attentive to both the world of work and the world of festivals, rituals, religiosities, daily life, and ordinary politicization, as well as social struggles and the countless forms of resistance, alongside conservatism and contradictions? How should we think about race, class, and gender, as inseparable from forms of power, racism, authoritarianism, and domination? How should we think about the differences between rural and urban worlds, as well as between centers and peripheries? To what extent can a shift in perspective also enable the rethinking of established concepts, ideas, and temporalities?
Thus, we will seek to discuss, from a historiographical and methodological perspective, what the main contributions and references would be “for writing a popular history of Brazil.” We are also interested in works that present original analyses and studies from the perspective of a history of the “people.”
Thus, the dossier will be structured around two main themes:
1. Historiography, methodologies, and theories in the writing of a popular history of Brazil
2. Subalternized social actors, diversity of gender, race, and class in contemporary Brazil.
The articles submitted may analyze different territories and cultural domains, as well as various historical periods.
Bibliography (selection):

Silvia Capanema, João Cândido e os navegantes negros: a revolta da chibata e a segunda abolição, Rio de Janeiro, Malê, 2022.

Sidney Chalhoub, Trabalho, lar e botequim: o cotidiano dos trabalhadores no Rio de Janeiro da Belle Epoque, Campinas, Editora da Unicamp, 2012.

Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (org.), História dos índios no Brasil, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1992.

João Paulo Peixoto Costa et al., Povos indígenas, independência e muitas histórias, Curitiba, CRV, 2022.

Mariana A. Dantas, Dimensões da participação política indígena. Estado nacional e revoltas em Pernambuco e Alagoas, 1817-1848, Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Nacional, 2018.

Monica Dantas (org.). Revoltas, motins, revoluções: homens livres pobres e libertos no Brasil do século XIX. São Paulo, Alameda, 2018.

Monica Dantas, Fronteiras movediças. A comarca de Itapicuru e a formação do arraial de Canudos (relações sociais na Bahia do século XIX), São Paulo, Intermeios, 2020.

« Faire une « histoire populaire », Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine, 2020, n° 67.

Florestan Fernandes, A integração do negro na sociedade de classes, São Paulo, Biblioteca Azul, 2008.

Eric Hobsbawm, Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998.

Hebe Mattos, Das Cores do Silêncio. Os significados da liberdade no sudeste escravista (Brasil, séc. XIX), São Paulo, ed. Unicamp, 1995.

Yuko Miki, Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil, New York & Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Alvaro Pereira do Nascimento, “Trabalhadores negros e o paradigma da ausência: uma contribuição à história social do trabalho no Brasil”, Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol. 29, no 59, p. 607-626, 2016.

Beatriz Nascimento, Uma história feita por mãos negras, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 2021.

Gérard Noiriel, Une Histoire populaire de la France, Marseille, Agone, 2018.

Sébastien Rozeaux, « Habiter Belo Monte, éphémère communauté chrétienne dans le sertão de Canudos (Brésil, 1893‑1897) », L’ordinaire des Amériques, n° 231, 2023, en ligne.

E.P. Thompson, La formation de la classe ouvrière anglaise, Paris, Le Seuil, 1988 [1963].

Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, Les Luttes et les Rêves. Une histoire populaire de la France de 1685 à nos jours, Paris, La Découverte, 2016.

Hodward Zinn, A People’s History of the United States. 1492-Present, New York, Harper Collins, 2003 [1980].