28 History - Lisbon earthquake in 1755

Wikipedia

 

1580 crisis, Iberian Union and decline of the Empire

 

On August 4, 1578, while fighting in Morocco, young King Sebastian died in battle without an heir and his body was not found.[47] His death lead to a dynastic crisis. The late king's elderly granduncle, Cardinal Henry, became king.[48] Henry I died a mere two years later on January 31, 1580.[49] Portugal was worried about the maintenance of its independence and sought help to find a new king.

 

Philip II of Spain was on his mother's side the grandson of King Manuel I, and on that basis claimed the Portuguese throne. He was opposed by António, Prior of Crato, the illegitimate son of one of the younger sons of Manuel I. As a result, following Henry's death Spain invaded Portugal and the Spanish king became Philip I of Portugal in 1580. The Spanish and Portuguese Empires came under a single rule.

 

This did not, however, end resistance to Spanish rule. The Prior of Crato held out in the Azores until 1583, and continued to actively seek to recover the throne until his death in 1595. Impostors claimed to be King Sebastian in 1584, 1585, 1595 and 1598. "Sebastianism", the myth that the young king will return to Portugal on a foggy day, has prevailed until modern times.

 

After the 16th century, Portugal gradually saw its wealth decreasing. Portugal was officially an autonomous state, but, in actuality, the country was under the rule of the Spanish from 1580 to 1640.[50] The Consejo de Portugal independent inasmuch as it was one of the key administrative units used by the Castilian monarchy, on legally equal terms with the Consejo de Indias.[51]

 

The joining of the two crowns deprived Portugal of a separate foreign policy, and Spain's enemies became Portugal's. England had been an ally of Portugal since the Treaty of Windsor in 1386. War between Spain and England led to a deterioration of the relations with Portugal's oldest ally, and the loss of Hormuz. From 1595 to 1663 Dutch-Portuguese War led to invasions of many countries in Asia and commercial interests in Japan, Africa and South America. In 1624, the Dutch seized Salvador, the capital of Brazil.[52] In 1630, the Dutch seized Pernambuco in northern Brazil.[53] The Treaty of 1654 returned Pernambuco to Portuguese control.[54] Both the English and the Dutch continued to aspire to dominate both the Atlantic slave trade and the spice trade with the Far East.

 

The Dutch intrusion into Brazil was long lasting and troublesome to Portugal. The Seven Provinces (the Dutch) captured a large portion of the Brazilian coast including the entire coasts except that of Bahia and much of the interior of most contemporary Northeastern states (Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará), while Dutch privateers sacked Portuguese ships in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

 

This was reversed, beginning with a major Spanish-Portuguese military operation in 1625. This laid the foundations for the recovery of remaining Dutch controlled areas. The other smaller, less developed areas were recovered in stages and relieved of Dutch piracy in the next two decades by local resistance and Portuguese expeditions. After the dissolution of the Iberian Union in 1640, Portugal would reestablish its authority over some lost territories of the Portuguese Empire.

 

Portuguese Restoration War (1640–1668)

 

At home, life was calm and serene with the first two Spanish kings; they maintained Portugal's status, gave excellent positions to Portuguese nobles in the Spanish courts, and Portugal maintained an independent law, currency and government. It was even proposed to move the Spanish capital to Lisbon. Later, Philip IV tried to make Portugal a Spanish province, and Portuguese nobles lost power.

 

Because of this, as well as the general strain on the finances of the Spanish throne as a result of the Thirty Years War, on 1 December 1640, the Duke of Braganza, one of the great native noblemen and a descendant of King Manuel I, was proclaimed king as John IV, and a war of independence against Spain was launched. Ceuta governors did not accept the new king; they maintained their allegiance to Spain. Although Portugal had substantially attained its independence in 1640, the Spanish continued to try to reassert their control for the next twenty-eight years, only accepting Portuguese independence in 1668.

 

In the 17th century the Portuguese emigrated in large numbers to Brazil. By 1709, John V prohibited emigration, since Portugal had lost a sizable fraction of its population. Brazil was elevated to a vice-kingdom.

 

Pombaline era

 

In 1738, Sebastião de Melo, the talented son of a Lisbon squire, began a diplomatic career as the Portuguese Ambassador in London and later in Vienna. The Queen consort of Portugal, Archduchess Maria Anne Josefa of Austria, was fond of Melo; and after his first wife died, she arranged the widowed de Melo's second marriage to the daughter of the Austrian Field Marshal Leopold Josef, Count von Daun. King John V of Portugal, however, was not pleased and recalled Melo to Portugal in 1749. John V died the following year and his son, Joseph I of Portugal was crowned. In contrast to his father, Joseph I was fond of de Melo, and with the Queen Mother's approval, he appointed Melo as Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the King's confidence in de Melo increased, the King entrusted him with more control of the state.

 

By 1755, Sebastião de Melo was made Prime Minister. Impressed by British economic success he had witnessed while Ambassador, he successfully implemented similar economic policies in Portugal. He abolished slavery in Portugal and in the Portuguese colonies in India; reorganized the army and the navy; restructured the University of Coimbra, and ended discrimination against different Christian sects in Portugal.

But Sebastião de Melo's greatest reforms were 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, and this was the first attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe. He ruled with a strong hand by imposing strict law upon all classes of Portuguese society from the high nobility to the poorest working class, along with a 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.

 

Disaster fell upon Portugal in the morning of 1 November 1755, when Lisbon was struck by a violent earthquake with an estimated Richter scale magnitude of 9. The city was razed to the ground by the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami and ensuing fires. Sebastião de 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 one year was already being rebuilt. The new downtown 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 big squares of the Pombaline Downtown of Lisbon still remain as one of Lisbon's tourist attractions: They represent the world's first quake-proof buildings.[citation needed] Sebastião de Melo also made an important contribution to the study of seismology by designing an inquiry that was sent to every parish in the country.

 

Following the earthquake, Joseph I gave his Prime Minister even more power, and Sebastião de 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 executed after a quick trial. The Jesuits were expelled from the country and their assets confiscated by the crown. Sebastião de Melo showed no mercy and prosecuted every person involved, even women and children. This was the final stroke that broke the power of the aristocracy and ensured the victory of the Minister against his enemies. Based upon his swift resolve, Joseph I made his loyal minister Count of Oeiras in 1759.

 

Following the Távora 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. However, historians also argue that Pombal’s "enlightenment," while far-reaching, was primarily a mechanism for enhancing autocracy at the expense of individual liberty and especially an apparatus for crushing opposition, suppressing criticism, and furthering colonial economic exploitation as well as intensifying book censorship and consolidating personal control and profit.[55]

 

The new ruler, Queen Maria I of Portugal, disliked the Marquis (See Távora affair), and forbade him from coming within 20 miles of her, thus curtailing his influence.

 

Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762)

 

In 1762 France and Spain tried to force Portugal to join the Bourbon Family Compact, by asserting that Britain had become too powerful. Joseph refused to accept this and protested that his 1704 alliance with Britain was no threat.

 

In spring 1762 Spanish troops invaded Portugal from the north as far as the Douro, while a second column captured Almeida and threatened to advance on Lisbon. The arrival of a force of British troops helped Portugal, blocking the Spanish advance and driving them back across the border following the Battle of Valencia de Alcántara. At the Treaty of Paris in 1763 Spain agreed to hand back Almeida to Portugal.

 

Crises of the nineteenth century

 

In 1807 Portugal refused Napoleon Bonaparte's demand to accede to the Continental System of embargo against the United Kingdom; a French invasion under General Junot followed, and Lisbon was captured on 8 December 1807. British intervention in the Peninsular War restored Portuguese independence, the last French troops being expelled in 1812. The war cost Portugal the province of Olivença,[56] now governed by Spain. Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, was the Portuguese capital between 1808 and 1821. In 1820 constitutionalist insurrections took place at Oporto (24 August) and Lisbon (15 September). Lisbon regained its status as the capital of Portugal when Brazil declared its independence from Portugal in 1822.

 

The death of John VI in 1826 led to a crisis of royal succession. His eldest son, Pedro I of Brazil, briefly became Pedro IV of Portugal, but neither the Portuguese nor the Brazilians wanted a unified monarchy; consequently, Pedro abdicated the Portuguese crown in favor of his 7-year-old daughter, Maria da Glória, on the condition that when of age she would marry his brother, Miguel. Dissatisfaction at Pedro's constitutional reforms led the "absolutist" faction of landowners and the church to proclaim Miguel king in February 1828. This led to the Liberal Wars in which Pedro, eventually forced Miguel to abdicate and go into exile in 1834, and placed his daughter on throne as Queen Maria II.

 

In 1890 the British government made an ultimatum delivered on 11 January 1890, to Portugal, forcing the retreat of Portuguese military forces in the land between the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola (most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia). The area had been claimed by Portugal, which had included it in its "Pink Map", but this clashed with British aspirations to create a railroad link between Cairo and Cape Town, thereby linking its colonies from the north of Africa to the very south. This diplomatic clash leading to several waves of protest, prompted the downfall of the Portuguese government. The 1890 British Ultimatum was considered by Portuguese historians and politics at that time, the most outrageous and infamous action of the British against her oldest ally

 

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