When disaster struck Lisbon in 1755, one controversial ruler saw a path to modernization.
On a single apocalyptic day in 1755, Lisbon, Portugal, was hit with an
earthquake, a tsunami, and destructive fires.
Photo of 19th-century
illustration by North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock Photo
Not long after a Magnitude 8.5 earthquake felled the city of Lisbon in 1755, a distinguished man mounted a stallion and galloped through the ruins to reach the king of Portugal. The monarch, Dom José I, had narrowly escaped death by staying at his country palace outside the city. As someone who prized hunting and philandering far more than governing, the king was unsure how to restore his ruined kingdom. In a moment forever stamped into Portugal’s history books, the man on horseback, Minister of State Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, rode up. Sensing uncertainty in the air, he began barking orders at aides and swiftly commandeered the country’s recovery effort.
With the king’s blessing, de Carvalho—known to history as the Marquis de Pombal—went on to rule Portugal until Dom José’s death. (After the earthquake, Dom José suffered from acute claustrophobia inside buildings and lived the rest of his days in a palatial tent, serving as a figurehead while Pombal made strategic decisions.) Over his 22 years in power, Pombal would become a deeply controversial figure who used Lisbon’s destruction to force the religious country into the modern era. The Lisbon that arose after the earthquake displayed modern thinking about seismology, architecture, and disaster planning. Now, those innovations are helping the Portuguese people plan for another assault from the sea.....MUCH MORE
November 1, 1755, the day of the earthquake, had dawned like any other All Saints’ Day in Lisbon. Parishioners were attending mass and servants were home preparing holiday feasts. Roughly 300 kilometers away and deep on the ocean floor, the tectonic plates of Africa, Eurasia, and America meet at a geological hotspot. The Atlantic Ocean is quiet, seismically speaking, but that morning the plates slipped and released as much energy as 32,000 Hiroshima bombs. Tremors and waves rippled across the North Atlantic, raising rivers in Scotland and claiming lives as far away as Brazil. The worst hellfire was reserved for Lisbon.
Around 9:30 a.m., tremors rumbled beneath the city, ringing Lisbon’s many church bells in unison. Some people recalled a “horrible subterranean noise” right before the ground began to shake in a six-minute-long upheaval that crumpled cathedrals and buried neighborhoods. Within the hour, a six-meter tsunami plowed into the waterfront and killed hundreds who had gathered there seeking safety. Meanwhile, hundreds of small fires, spread by overturned cooking hearths and votive candles, were building into what would become a five-day firestorm. This last blow was the most destructive and razed what was left of the jewel in Portugal’s crown.
The Great Lisbon Earthquake is the epitome of Portugal’s paradoxical relationship with the sea. For centuries leading up to the disaster, Portugal had grown fat on the bounty of a vast maritime empire that sprawled from Brazil to India—yet seafaring was generally reviled in Portuguese society and very little of the colonial spoils were invested back into the country or its citizenry. In a single day, the ocean leveled Lisbon, the empire’s nexus where much of the country’s wealth was stored in vast waterfront warehouses. One destroyed warehouse, the Casa da India, contained an estimated 1.5 percent of Portugal’s GDP in Brazilian diamonds. Lisbon’s devout Catholic population saw the ruined city as divine punishment. The Protestant countries of Europe also saw the destruction as punishment, but for backward Catholic behavior. Pombal, however, saw a path to power and an opportunity to rewrite the future of a crumbling colonial state.....
