Juan Álvarez, un itinerario historiográfico

Abstract

Juan Alvarez’s writings stand neatly out in the context of Argentine historiography in the early 20th century. Lawyer by education, he approached history through self-teaching as did many Argentine scholars of his time, but had a remarkable ability to propose an innovative reading of Argentine history including many issues from the social sciences. His approaches paralleled some of the most innovative regards of the times in European and American contexts. This article explores Alvarez’s approaches and their changes over time, as they evolved from a rather optimistic view of the Argentine past to a more pessimistic one, and from a formalized and modelizing look to another one which was closer to the premises of an idiographic approach.