The Lisbon Catalyst

On the morning of All Saints Day, the Lisbon Earthquake of November 1st, 1755, devastated the prosperous Portuguese city almost instantly and produced a lasting physical and psychological impact on surrounding areas. As the estimated 8.5 magnitude earthquake brought chaos upon the commercially important city, many in Lisbon turned to religion, believing the earthquake and its destruction were divinely ordained in response to sin, while others looked for philosophical explanations.¹ Soon, one of the king's officials named Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, also known as Pombal, assumed power. In a short period of time, Pombal took a detailed accounting of the damage via a meticulous survey, restored order with the military, and planned the rebuilding of the city from its remains.² While the city eventually rose from its ruins, the European conscience was forever changed. News of the earthquake, often considered the first international news event, spread far and wide and remained the center of European conversation for many months, serving as a catalyst for debate and upheaval.³ Extensive and unprecedented news coverage of the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 created a wider, more level playing field for intellectual discourse across Europe.

The news of the earthquake fully utilized the developing European informational networks, providing the growing ranks of the literate with unprecedented access to observations about the Lisbon earthquake.⁴ Before the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, news about natural disasters was chiefly spread by traders and diplomats through private letters; newspapers and pamphlets had secondary but growing roles in the transfer of information.⁵ In 1531, when a significant earthquake struck Lisbon, the news was likely not published in papers further than Valencia, exemplifying the inconsistent reporting of earthquakes at the time that rarely crossed linguistic borders.⁶ These networks were effective at dispersing news to merchants, diplomats, and heads of state; however, an ever-increasing population of literate commoners and even intellectuals had to actively search for correspondence, periodicals, or pamphlets bearing news.⁷ When the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 hit, the network sprang into action. Due to the sensational nature of the Earthquake and its diplomatic and commercial implications, news of the network spread quickly across Europe. Ten days after the earthquake, on November 11th, the Gaceta de Madrid, which had previously covered the earthquake’s occurrence in Madrid, published a story on Lisbon’s fate, and copies of letters from Lisbon were posted on walls and buildings around the city.⁸ By the end of November, the news had spread throughout Europe, and before 1756, news of the earthquake had crossed the Atlantic.⁹ Newspapers at the time contained a variety of information conveyed concisely and without considerable depth, but the Lisbon earthquake was reported in detail due to its sensational nature and commercial implications. Many newspapers ran dozens of stories on the earthquake, with one Spanish newspaper sending a correspondent live in and chronicle the ruins in Lisbon for many months.¹⁰ However, most European newspapers shied away from discussing the philosophical implications of the earthquake or its causes because they were subject to a monarchal censorship wary of extreme or controversial views; papers instead focused on presenting an accurate accounting of the event and its consequences.¹¹ Notwithstanding various details and accounts that were fabricated and sensationalized, much of the basic information of the earthquake, including its time, location, devastating effects, and ensuing fires and tsunami, was accurately reported and widely accepted around Europe.¹² Granted this, Europeans had extraordinary access to information about the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. This shared knowledge established a collective foundation for philosophizing and theorizing on the earthquake’s causes, which were widely debated at the time.

The observational nature of news regarding the earthquake left the need for literate Europeans to produce their own theories and engage in intellectual discussion, bringing together many disciplines and portions of society for a holistic, interdisciplinary discussion of the earthquake and its causes. The earthquake’s unanswered questions and seemingly boundless reporting pushed many philosophes, both well-known and rising, to join the conversation and publish their opinions. Rousseau, an obscure philosopher at the time, gained eminence by penning a widely published letter vehemently disagreeing with Voltaire, a famous philosophe, and defending the Deist optimism of the Enlightenment, which had its foundations shaken by the earthquake’s occurrence.¹³ Others took the widespread evidence of Lisbon’s destruction as an opportunity to sermonize against sin and bring Europe closer to Christianity, drawing rebukes from Pombal for being heretical.¹⁴ Many seized upon information from Pombal’s survey and reporting of the earthquake’s occurrence elsewhere across Europe and the Mediterranean to theorize about natural processes that could have caused the Earthquake. While many theories were mistaken, including a common attribution to gasses combusting underground, a few natural philosophers made headway into the study of earthquakes.¹⁵ Some insightful notions, among others, were that tsunamis and earthquakes were connected, and tsunamis were caused by the shaking of the earth, and even that their waves move faster in deeper waters than shallow waters.¹⁶ However, agreement was hard to come by, and the lack of previous scientific inquiry into earthquakes meant that there were countless theories on the earthquake’s causes. Of the ten remaining submissions to an essay contest on the earthquake’s causes, no two were alike in argument.¹⁷ The earthquake also posed an opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration and disagreement. Theories spanned philosophy, theology, politics, and science, often employing multiple in kind with the observations available to them. Ponce-Denis Écouchard Le Brun combined many notions of the earthquake’s cause together into a poem titled Ode on the Destruction of Lisbon, citing sulfur, salts, niter, tar, and heavenly thunder.¹⁸ While no definitive answers were reached, the main result of these discussion was an increased European capacity for discussion.

Literate Europeans took the unparalleled observations shared through developing information networks and worked together to rationalize and understand the horrific earthquake that struck Lisbon on November 1, 1755. Although it would take a war between France and England in May 1756 to pull the public’s attention elsewhere, the European conscience and information networks were forever changed by the Lisbon Earthquake.¹⁹ This wide, open, oftentimes unrestrained, and even blasphemous discussion opened the intellectual floodgates in Europe, leaving behind the dialogical infrastructure for future far-reaching public responses to catastrophe.

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my kind tutors Prisha Shivani, Ethan Oder, Migyu Kim, and Shloak Shah at the Writing Center for their indispensable counsel and expertise. I also would like to express my appreciation for my peers for their insightful comments during class discussions. Finally, I’m grateful for Ms. Frey for her wise advice and generous courtesy with my timeline.