Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal
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Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Count of Oeiras, 1st Marquis of Pombal (in Portuguese, Marquês de Pombal, pron. IPA: [mɐɾ'keʃ dɨ 'põbaɫ]), (13 May 1699 — 15 May 1782) was an 18th century Portuguese statesman. He was Minister of the Kingdom (the equivalent to a today's Interior Minister) in the government of Joseph I of Portugal from 1750 to 1777. He was undoubtly the most prominent minister in the government, and today he is usually considered to have been the de facto head of government. Pombal is notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In addition he implemented sweeping economic policies in Portugal to regulate commercial activity and standardize quality throughout the country. The term Pombaline is used to describe not only his tenure, but also the architectural style which formed after the great earthquake
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[edit] Early Days
Sebastião de Carvalho e Melo was born in Lisbon, the son of Manuel de Carvalho e Ataíde, a country squire with properties in the Leiria region, and of his wife Teresa Luiza de Mendonça e Melo. During his youth he studied at the University of Coimbra and then served briefly in the army. He then moved to Lisbon and eloped with Teresa de Mendonça e Almada (1689-1737), the niece of the Count of Arcos Sebastião. The marriage was a turbulent one, as his wife had married him against her family's wishes. The in-laws made life unbearable for the young couple; the newlyweds eventually moved to Melo's properties near Pombal.
[edit] Political Career
In 1738, Melo received his first public appointment as the Portuguese ambassador to Great Britain. In 1745, he served as the Portuguese ambassador to Austria. The Queen consort of Portugal, Archduchess Mary Anne Josepha of Austria (1683 - 1754), was fond of him; after his first wife died she arranged for him to marry the daughter of the Austrian Field Marshal Leopold Josef, Count von Daun. King John, however, was not pleased and recalled him in 1749. John V died the following year and his son Joseph I of Portugal was crowned. Joseph I was fond of Melo; with the Queen Mother's approval he appointed him as Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the King's confidence in him increased, the King entrusted him with more control of the state.
By 1755, the King appointed him Prime Minister. Impressed by English economic success, which he had witnessed while he was Ambassador, he successfully implemented similar economic policies in Portugal. He abolished slavery in the Portuguese colonies in India, reorganized the army and the navy, and ended discrimination against non-Catholic Christians in Portugal.
[edit] Reformer
During the Age of Enlightenment Portugal was considered one of Europe's unenlightened backwaters. It was a country of three million people; in 1750, 200,000 people lived in the nation's 538 monasteries. Voltaire especially made fun of what he called the persistent Catholic superstition; in his 1759 bestseller Candide, he wrote: "After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter ruin than to give the people a beautiful auto-da-fe; for it had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking."
Melo seems to have been deeply embarrassed[citation needed] by Portugal's much-lamented[citation needed] backwardness. Having lived in Vienna and London, two major centres of the Enlightenment, he increasingly believed that the Jesuits, with their alleged doctrinary grip on science and education, were an inherent drag on an independent, Portuguese-style illuminismo. He was especially familiar with the anti-Jesuit tradition of England, and in Vienna he had made friends with Gerhard van Swieten, a confidant of Maria Theresia and a staunch adversary of the Austrian Jesuits and their influence. As prime minister Melo engaged the Jesuits in a dirty propaganda war, which was watched closely by the rest of Europe, and he launched a number of conspiracy theories regarding the order's desire for power. During the Távoras affair (see below) he accused the Societas Jesu of treason and attempted regicide, a major public relations catastrophe for the order, in the age of absolutism. Pombal was an important precursor for the suppression of the Jesuits throughout Europe and its colonies, which culminated in 1773, when Pope Clement XIV abolished the order.
Further important reforms were carried out in education by Melo: he expelled the Jesuits in 1759, created the basis for secular public primary and secondary schools, introduced vocational training, created hundreds of new teaching posts, added departments of mathematics and natural sciences to the University of Coimbra, and introduced new taxes to pay for these reforms.
His greatest reforms were however economic and financial, with the creation of several companies and guilds to regulate every commercial activity. He demarcated the region for production of port, to ensure the wine's quality; his was the first attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe. He ruled with a heavy hand, imposing strict laws upon all classes of Portuguese society, from the high nobility to the poorest working class, and via his widespread review of the country's tax system. These reforms gained him enemies in the upper classes, especially among the high nobility, who despised him as a social upstart.
[edit] The Lisbon earthquake
- Main article: 1755 Lisbon earthquake.
Disaster fell upon Portugal on the morning of November 1, 1755, when Lisbon was struck by a violent earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale. The city was razed by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami and fires. Melo survived by a stroke of luck, and then immediately embarked on rebuilding the city, with his famous quote: What now? We bury the dead and feed the living. Despite the calamity, Lisbon suffered no epidemics, and within less than a year it was already being rebuilt. The new central area of Lisbon was designed to resist subsequent earthquakes. Architectural models were built for tests, and the effects of an earthquake were simulated by marching troops around the models. The buildings and major squares of the Pombaline Downtown of Lisbon are one of Lisbon's main tourist attractions: they are the world's first earthquake-proof buildings. Melo made also an important contribution to the study of seismology, by designing a survey that was sent to every parish in the country. The questionnaire asked whether dogs or other animals behaved strangely prior to the earthquake, whether there was a noticeable difference in the rise or fall of the water level in wells, and how many buildings had been destroyed and what kind of destruction had occurred. The answers have allowed modern Portuguese scientists to reconstruct the event with precision.
[edit] The Távoras affair
Following the earthquake, Joseph I gave his Prime Minister even more power, and Melo became a powerful, progressive dictator. As his power grew, his enemies increased in number, and bitter disputes with the high nobility became frequent. In 1758, Joseph I was wounded in an attempted assassination. The Távora family and the Duke of Aveiro were implicated, and they were executed after a quick trial. The Jesuits were expelled from the country, and their assets confiscated by the crown. Melo showed no mercy, prosecuting every person involved, even women and children. This was the final stroke that broke the power of the aristocracy and ensured the Prime Minister's victory against his enemies. In reward for his swift resolve, Joseph I made his loyal minister Count of Oeiras in 1759. Following the Távoras affair, the new Count of Oeiras knew no opposition. Made Marquis of Pombal in 1770, he effectively ruled Portugal until Joseph I's death in 1779.
[edit] Fall and death
King Joseph's successor, Queen Maria I of Portugal, disliked the Marquis. She never forgave him the ruthlessness he had displayed against the Távora family, and she withdrew all his political offices. The Queen also issued one of the world's first restraining orders, commanding that the Marquis should not be closer than 20 miles from her presence. If she were to travel near his estates, he was compelled to remove himself from his house to fulfill the royal decree. Maria I is reported to have had tantrums at the slightest reference to her father's former Prime Minister.
Pombal built a palatial villa named Oeiras. The villa featured formal French gardens enlivened with traditional Portuguese glazed tile walls. There were waterfalls and waterworks set within vineyards.
Pombal died peacefully on his estate at Pombal in 1782. Today, Lisbon's most important square and busiest underground station is named Marquês de Pombal in his honor. There is an imposing statue of the Marquis in the square as well.
[edit] External links
- Catholic Encyclopedia: a 1908 official Catholic view
- Encyclopædia Britannica: Pombal
[edit] Further reading
- Cheke, Marcus Dictator of Portugal: A Life of the Marquês of Pombal, 1699–1782 (1938, reprinted 1969) is the standard biography in English.
- Alden, Dauril, Royal Government in Colonial Brazil with Special Reference to the Administration of the Marquês of Lavradio, Viceroy, 1769-1779, University of California Press, 1968; Pombal's colonial policy.
- Maxwell, Kenneth, Pombal - Paradox of the Enlightment, Cambridge 1995.
| Preceded by Marco António de Azevedo Coutinho |
Prime Minister of Portugal (Minister of the Kingdom) 1750–1756 |
Succeeded by Luís da Cunha Manuel |
