Nelson Werneck Sodré:

A military historian in the Iseb and the origin of the theory of brazilian revolution

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make public the preliminary results of an ongoing investigation for doctoral thesis in Social Sciences. We intend to discuss Nelson Werneck Sodré’s concept of “Brazilian revolution”, as well as the core of his theory on Brazil when politically and intellectually active inside the Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies (Iseb). To localize the nucleus of Sodreian argumentation is to shed light into categories connected to the ideas of “social change” and “bourgeois democratic-revolution”, both poorly understood in the present day, which are: Nation, people, nationalism and the national, anti-feudal and anti-imperialistic revolution. The results, although introductory, were obtained not only by the study of Sodré’s main works, but also analyzing the core of his production: the Iseb. Trying a critical recovery through a rearrangement of focus, we aim to define all the elements of Werneck Sodré’s commonly known “consecrated theory” as well as the product of historiographical strands that were too hasty in judging both the work and the acting of the author inside Iseb.