- 1755 Lisbon earthquake
The 1755
Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, took place onNovember 1 1755 at around 9:40 in the morning. [ [http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Portuguese_Brazilian_Studies/ejph/html/issue4/html/belo_main.html Between History and Periodicity: Printed and Hand-Written News in 18th-Century Portuga] ] The earthquake was followed by atsunami and fire, which caused near-total destruction of Lisbon,Portugal and adjoining areas.Geologist s today estimate the Lisbon earthquake approached magnitude 9 on the Richter scale, with anepicenter in theAtlantic Ocean about 200 km (120 mi) west-southwest ofCape St. Vincent . Estimates place the death toll between 60,000 to 100,000 peopleFact|date=August 2008, making it one of the most destructive earthquakes in history.The earthquake accentuated political tensions in
Portugal and profoundly disrupted the country's eighteenth-century colonial ambitions. The event was widely discussed and dwelt upon by European Enlightenment philosophers, and inspired major developments intheodicy and in the philosophy of the sublime. As the first earthquake studied scientifically for its effects over a large area, it led to the birth of modernseismology .The earthquake
Lisbon had been shaken by several important earthquakes before November 1755: eight in the 14th century, five in the 16th century (including the 1531 earthquake that destroyed 1,500 houses, and the 1597 earthquake when three streets vanished), and three in the 17th century. During the 18th century, two earthquakes were reported in 1724 and 1750. In 1755, the earthquake struck on the morning of
1 November , theCatholic holiday ofAll Saints' Day . Contemporary reports state that the earthquake lasted between three-and-a-half and six minutes, causing gigantic fissures five-metres (15 ft) wide to appear in the city centre. Survivors rushed to the open space of the docks for safety and watched as the water receded, revealing a sea floor littered by lost cargo and old shipwrecks. Approximately forty minutes after the earthquake, an enormoustsunami engulfed the harbour and downtown, rushing up theTagus river. It was followed by two more waves. In the areas unaffected by the tsunami, fire quickly broke out, and flames raged for five days.Lisbon was not the only Portuguese city affected by the catastrophe. Throughout the south of the country, in particular the
Algarve , destruction was rampant. Atsunami destroyed some coastal fortresses in the Algarve and, in the lower levels, razed several houses. Almost all the coastal towns and villages of the Algarve were heavily damaged, except Faro, which was protected by the sandy banks ofRia Formosa . In Lagos, the waves reached the top of the city walls. Other towns of different Portuguese regions, likePeniche ,Cascais , and evenCovilhã which is located near theSerra da Estrela mountain range in central inland Portugal, were affected. The shock waves of the earthquake were felt throughoutEurope as far asFinland andNorth Africa . Tsunamis as tall as 20 metres (66 ft) swept the coast ofNorth Africa , and struckMartinique andBarbados across the Atlantic. A three-metre (ten-foot)tsunami hitCornwall on the southern English coast.Galway , on the west coast ofIreland , was also hit, resulting in partial destruction of the "Spanish Arch " section of the city wall.[
epicentre of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.] Of Lisbon's population of 275,000, as manyas 90,000 were killed.Fact|date=August 2008 Another 10,000 lost their lives inMorocco .Fact|date=August 2008 Eighty-five percent of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed, including famous palaces and libraries, as well as most examples of Portugal's distinctive 16th-centuryManueline architecture. Several buildings that had suffered little earthquake damage were destroyed by the subsequent fire. The new Opera House, opened just six months before (named the "Phoenix Opera"), burned to the ground. The Royal Ribeira Palace, which stood just beside theTagus river in the modern square of "Terreiro do Paço ", was destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. Inside, the 70,000-volume royal library as well as hundreds of works of art, including paintings byTitian , Rubens, and Correggio, were lost. The royal archives disappeared together with detailed historical records of explorations byVasco da Gama and other early navigators. The earthquake also damaged major churches in Lisbon, namely theLisbon Cathedral , theBasilica s of São Paulo, Santa Catarina, São Vicente de Fora, and the Misericordia Church. The Royal Hospital of All Saints (the largest public hospital at the time) in theRossio square was consumed by fire and hundreds of patients burned to death. The tomb of national heroNuno Álvares Pereira was also lost. Visitors to Lisbon may still walk the ruins of the Carmo Convent, which were preserved to remind Lisboners of the destruction.Relief and reconstruction efforts
The royal family escaped unharmed from the catastrophe; King
Joseph I of Portugal and the court had left the city, after attending mass at sunrise, fulfilling the wish of one of the king's daughters to spend the holiday away from Lisbon. After the catastrophe, Joseph I developed a fear of living within walls, and the court was accommodated in a huge complex of tents and pavilions in the hills of Ajuda, then on the outskirts of Lisbon. The king'sclaustrophobia never waned, and it was only after Joseph's death that his daughterMaria I of Portugal began building the royalAjuda Palace , which still stands on the site of the old tented camp. Like the king, the prime minister Sebastião de Melo (theMarquis of Pombal ) survived the earthquake. When asked what was to be done, Pombal reportedly replied "Bury the dead and feed the living," [cite book |author=Kendrick |title= The Lisbon Earthquake |pages=75 Kendrick writes that the remark is apocryphal and is attributed to other sources in anti-Pombal literature.] and set upon organizing relief and rehabilitation efforts. Firefighters were sent to extinguish the raging flames, and teams of workers and ordinary citizens were ordered to remove the thousands of corpses before disease could spread. Contrary to custom and against the wishes of the Church, many corpses were loaded ontobarge s and buried at sea beyond the mouth of the Tagus. To prevent disorder in the ruined city, thePortuguese Army was deployed andgallows were constructed at high points around the city to deter looters; at least 34 peopleFact|date=June 2007 were publicly executed. The Army prevented many able-bodied citizens from fleeing, pressing them into relief and reconstruction work.The king and the prime minister immediately launched efforts to rebuild the city, hiring architects, engineers and organizing labor. In less than a year, the city was cleared of debris. Keen to have a new and perfectly ordained city, the king commissioned the construction of big squares, rectilinear, large avenues and widened streets — the new "mottos" of Lisbon. When the
Marquis of Pombal was asked about the need for such wide streets, he is said to have replied: "one day they will be small."Citequote|date=August 2008The Pombaline buildings are among the first seismically-protected constructions in the world. Small wooden models were built for testing, and earthquakes were simulated by marching troops around them. Lisbon's "new" downtown, known today as the
Pombaline Downtown ("Baixa Pombalina"), is one of the city's famed attractions. Sections of other Portuguese cities, like theVila Real de Santo António inAlgarve , were also rebuilt along Pombaline principles.The
Casa Pia , a Portuguese institution founded by Mary I, known as "Pia" (Pious, in English), and organized by Police Intendant Pina Manique in 1780, was founded following the social disarray of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.Effect on society and philosophy
The earthquake had wide-ranging effects on the lives of the populace and intelligentsia. The earthquake had struck on an important Catholic holiday and had destroyed almost every important church in the city, causing anxiety and confusion amongst the citizens of a staunch and devout
Catholic city and country, which had been a major patron of the Church. Theologians and philosophers would focus and speculate on the religious cause and message, seeing the earthquake as a manifestation of the anger of God. Some people thought the earthquake was a punishment for the massacre of thousands of armless indios and missionaries killed in South America (especially Paraguay). This massacre was ordered by the king of Portugal and made by Portuguese armies in 1754-1755.The earthquake and its fallout strongly influenced the intelligentsia of the
Europe an Age of Enlightenment. The noted writer-philosopherVoltaire used the earthquake in "Candide " and in his "Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne " ("Poem on the Lisbon disaster"). Voltaire's "Candide" attacks the notion that all is for the best in this, "the best of all possible worlds ", a world closely supervised by a benevolent deity. The Lisbon disaster provided a salutary counterexample. AsTheodor Adorno wrote, " [t] he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of thetheodicy of Leibniz" ("Negative Dialectics" 361). In the later twentieth century, followingAdorno , the 1755 earthquake has sometimes been compared to theHolocaust as a catastrophe that transformed European culture and philosophy.Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also influenced by the devastation following the earthquake, whose severity he believed was due to too many people living within the close quarters of the city. Rousseau used the earthquake as an argument against cities as part of his desire for a more naturalistic way of life.The concept of the sublime, though it existed before 1755, was developed in philosophy and elevated to greater importance by
Immanuel Kant , in part as a result of his attempts to comprehend the enormity of the Lisbon quake and tsunami. Kant published three separate texts on the Lisbon earthquake. The young Kant, fascinated with the earthquake, collected all the information available to him in news pamphlets, and used it to formulate a theory of the causes of earthquakes. Kant's theory, which involved the shifting of huge subterranean caverns filled with hot gases, was (though ultimately shown to be false) one of the first systematic modern attempts to explain earthquakes by positing natural, rather than supernatural, causes. According toWalter Benjamin , Kant's slim early book on the earthquake "probably represents the beginnings of scientific geography inGermany . And certainly the beginnings of seismology."Werner Hamacher has claimed that the earthquake's consequences extended into the vocabulary of philosophy, making the common metaphor of firm "grounding" for philosophers' arguments shaky and uncertain: "Under the impression exerted by the Lisbon earthquake, which touched the European mind in one [of] its more sensitive epochs, the metaphor of ground and tremor completely lost their apparent innocence; they were no longer merely figures of speech" (263). Hamacher claims that the foundational certainty of Descartes' philosophy began to shake following the Lisbon earthquake.The earthquake had a major impact on Portuguese politics. The prime minister was the favorite of the king, but the aristocracy despised him as an upstart son of a country squire (although the Prime Minister Sebastião de Melo is known today as
Marquis of Pombal , the title was only granted in 1770, fifteen years after the earthquake). The prime minister in turn disliked the old nobles, whom he considered corrupt and incapable of practical action. BeforeNovember 1 ,1755 there was a constant struggle for power and royal favor, but the competent response of the Marquis of Pombal effectively severed the power of the old aristocratic factions. However, silent opposition and resentment of King Joseph I began to rise, which would culminate with the attempted assassination of the king, and the subsequent elimination of the powerfulDuke of Aveiro and the Távora family.Development of seismology
The prime minister's response was not limited to the practicalities of reconstruction. He ordered a query sent to all
parish es of the country regarding the earthquake and its effects. Questions included:* how long did the earthquake last?
* how many aftershocks were felt?
* what kind of damage was caused?
* did animals behave strangely?
* what happened in wells and water holes?The answers to these and other questions are still archived in the
Torre do Tombo , the national historical archive. Studying and cross-referencing the priests' accounts, modern scientists were able to reconstruct the event from a scientific perspective. Without the query designed by theMarquis of Pombal , this would have been impossible. Because the marquis was the first to attempt an objective scientific description of the broad causes and consequences of an earthquake, he is regarded as a forerunner of modern seismological scientists.The geological causes of this earthquake and the seismic activity in the region continue to be discussed and debated by contemporary scientists.
ee also
*
Pombaline style
*List of earthquakes
*Earthquake Baroque Notes
References
* Benjamin, Walter. "The Lisbon Earthquake." In "Selected Writings" vol. 2. Belknap, 1999. ISBN 0-674-94586-7. The often abstruse critic Benjamin gave a series of radio broadcasts for children in the early 1930s; this one, from 1931, discusses the Lisbon earthquake and summarizes some of its impact on European thought.
* Braun, Theodore E. D., and John B. Radner, eds. "The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Representations and Reactions" ("SVEC" 2005:02). Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2005. ISBN 0-7294-0857-4. Recent scholarly essays on the earthquake and its representations in art, with a focus on Voltaire. (In English and French.)
* Brooks, Charles B. "Disaster at Lisbon: The Great Earthquake of 1755". Long Beach: Shangton Longley Press, 1994. (No apparent ISBN.) A narrative history.
* Chase, J. "The Great Earthquake At Lisbon (1755)". Colliers Magazine, 1920.
* Dynes, Russell Rowe. "The dialogue between Voltaire and Rousseau on the Lisbon earthquake: The emergence of a social science view." University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center, 1999.
* Fonseca, J. D. "1755, O Terramoto de Lisboa, The Lisbon Earthquake". Argumentum, Lisbon, 2004.
* Hamacher, Werner. "The Quaking of Presentation." In "Premises: Essays on Philosophy and Literature from Kant to Celan", pp. 261–293. Stanford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8047-3620-0.
* Kendrick, T.D. "The Lisbon Earthquake". Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1957.
* Neiman, Susan. "Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Modern Philosophy". Princeton University Press, 2002. This book centers on philosophical reaction to the earthquake, arguing that the earthquake was responsible for modern conceptions of evil.
* Ray, Gene. " [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/yale_journal_of_criticism/v017/17.1ray.html Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime] ." "Yale Journal of Criticism" 17.1 (2004): pp. 1–18.
* Seco e Pinto, P.S. (Editor). "Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering: Proceedings of the Second International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 21–25 June, 1999". ISBN 90-5809-116-3
* Weinrich, Harald. "Literaturgeschichte eines Weltereignisses: Das Erdbeben von Lissabon." In "Literatur für Leser", pp. 64–76. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971. ISBN 3-17-087225-7. In German. Cited by Hamacher as a broad survey of philosophical and literary reactions to the Lisbon earthquake.External links
* [http://nisee.berkeley.edu/lisbon/ Images and historical depictions of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake]
* [http://www.lisbon-and-portugal.com/travel/1755-lisbon-earthquake.html The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake]
* [http://nisee.berkeley.edu/elibrary/browse/kozak?eq=5234 More images of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami]* [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1755lisbonquake.html Contemporary eyewitness account of Rev. Charles Davy]
* [http://www.phenomena.org.uk/lisbon.htm Description of the Pan-European consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]
* [http://www.dcdave.com/article4/051117.htm No Source for Hanging-Priests Calumny]
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