Marquěs de Pombal

Portuguese statesman

• Born: May 13, 1699
• Birthplace: Lisbon, Portugal
• Died: May 9, 1782
• Place of death: Pombal, Portugal

The most influential statesman in modern Portuguese history, Pombal was an effective though despotic leader. He reorganized the economy, government, and society of Portugal in accord with the rational, secular principles of the Enlightenment.

Early Life

The marquěs de Pombal (muhr-KAYSH thuh puhm-BAHL) was the son of Manuel de Carvalho e Ataíde, a military officer and member of the landed gentry, and Teresa Luiza de Mendonça e Mello. Thus, in Portuguese tradition, he was christened Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello. He studied law at the University of Coimbra and eloped with the aristocratic Teresa de Noronha e Bourbon Mendonça e Almada. The marriage was childless and had been opposed by her family. Teresa died in 1737. Carvalho e Mello was appointed the following year as ambassador to Great Britain and then, in 1745, to Austria. In 1746, he married the Austrian countess Maria Leonor Ernestina Daun, daughter of a renowned military leader, with whom he had five children.

Carvalho e Mello was recalled to Portugal in 1749 and, with the ascension a year later of King Joseph I, was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs. Growing in the esteem of the new monarch, he was appointed in 1755 as secretary of state for the reino (kingdom), the equivalent of prime minister. He executed that office with a direction and force unprecedented in Portuguese history. Joseph confided to him virtually all aspects of government, honoring him with the title of count of Oeiras in 1759 and marquěs of Pombal in 1769. It is by the latter title that Pombal has become most widely known in history.

Influenced by the Enlightenment, which he had observed and admired throughout Europe, Pombal resolved to apply rational administration to Portuguese national affairs. In the fifteenth century, Portugal had been at the forefront of the advance of Western Europe around the world, but its empire had been progressively checked and reduced by Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain. A second life had been given the Portuguese empire with the discovery of gold and diamonds in Brazil at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but over the latter half of the century, that wealth steadily diminished. It was to achieve a sustained and enduring development of Portugal’s economy and society that Pombal resolved to reform the country in accord with rational, Enlightenment principles.

Life’s Work

From the point of view of history, Pombal’s career as chief minister has become synonymous with sweeping reform. In accord with mercantilist theories of the time, he considered Portugal’s most serious economic problem to be its chronic trade deficits. The wealth of gold and diamonds that Portugal received from Brazil became a conduit to Great Britain. Portugal imported the bulk of its high-value manufactured products and trade services from Britain, exporting to that country in return lower-value agricultural products, especially wine.

During the first years of his government, Pombal established a series of trade monopolies to keep the prices of Portuguese agricultural products stable and relatively high. These state monopolies controlled products such as cacao, sugar, and tobacco from Brazil and wine from Portugal. Pombal also aided the development of Portuguese manufacturing to substitute domestic products for imported ones. His economic measures favored the rise of large businesses, disadvantaging smaller ones. Such measures also gave new political and social power to the bourgeoisie, weakening the traditional aristocracy.

Pombal’s authority was greatly enhanced in the wake of one of the worst disasters in modern European history, the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on November 1, 1755. Calculated as possibly having measured near a catastrophic 9.0 on the Richter scale (a twentieth century invention), the earthquake and consequent tsunamis and fires leveled one-third of the capital. Acting swiftly, effectively, and imaginatively, Pombal and his team of architects and military engineers rebuilt Lisbon in a few years, making it one of the most modern and efficient ports in Europe. His administrative effectiveness empowered him to pursue his autocratic reform policies.

In 1758, a group of traditional landed nobility, led by the duke of Aveiro, attempted to assassinate King Joseph. The attempt failed, and Pombal had the conspirators killed or banished. The following year, he had the Jesuit religious order dissolved and banished from the country. He considered this group of clergy a “state within the state” that manipulated elites and controlled a stagnant educational system.

With the Jesuits dissolved, Pombal began a massive campaign to reform the Portuguese educational system. The curriculum and physical structure of the traditional University of Coimbra was changed beginning in 1772 to incorporate scientific and more modern philosophical subjects. A school for the children of the aristocracy had earlier been established in Lisbon with a curriculum emphasizing scientific and entrepreneurial values. The Indian mission schools of the Jesuits in Brazil were taken over by the state. One of Pombal’s brothers was a chief administrator in Brazil. The capital of that colony was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro in 1763 to keep government vigilance closer to the sources of gold and diamonds in the interior.

In 1769, Pombal reformed the Inquisition in Portugal. From a religious tribunal that prosecuted religious deviation and with the authority to burn heretics, he transformed the tribunal into a secular court for the prosecution of political opponents of the state. The new, secular Inquisition was headed by another of Pombal’s brothers. Pombal had abolished slavery earlier in the decade but only in the Portuguese homeland, not in Brazil, where it was the crucial form of labor.

Pombal radically changed the Portuguese economy and state in many respects. In doing so, he accumulated numerous aristocratic, commercial, and clerical enemies, filling numerous jail cells with his critics. However, he was always protected by the support of the monarch, for whom Pombal had become the prime architect of royal absolutism, until Joseph died in 1777. When Joseph’s daughter, Maria I, became queen, she forced Pombal from office. Earlier Pombal had attempted to block her from succeeding, because she was a woman. Pombal was tried for abuses of power and corruption, but the tribunal of judges was divided in its conclusions. Queen Maria urged exemplary punishment but tolerated the decision to banish Pombal to his estates because of his advanced age and fragility after a series of strokes. The marquěs died just before he would have turned eighty-three.

Significance

On the one hand, the marquěs de Pombal left a legacy of considerable improvements in Portugal: He made the agricultural sector more productive, invigorated manufacturing, and redressed the country’s trade deficit. He set standards for a scientific educational system, commercial values, and a service-oriented government bureaucracy. However, he effected these changes within a context of increasingly authoritarian practices that were ultimately prejudicial to his core objectives. Despotism ultimately repressed the core of small businesses and farms, the spirit of intellectual inquiry, and constructive challenges to the government made by its critics. Pombal maintained Portugal as a fundamentally corporatist state. What he effected was a shift in its corporate nature, from one dominated by a traditional aristocracy to a government in which power was shared by the landed aristocracy and a bourgeois oligarchy.

Bibliography

Boxer, Charles R. “Brazilian Gold and British Traders in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century.” Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 3 (1969): 454-472. Traces the crucial role of Brazilian gold in the Portuguese economy and its export to Great Britain, transforming Britain into leading banking center of Europe.

Duncan, Thomas Bentley. Pombal and the Suppression of the Portuguese Jesuits: An Inquiry into Causes and Motives. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of Chicago, 1961. Reviews scholarly literature regarding the motives, methods, and consequences of Pombal’s hostility toward the Jesuits.

Galvão-Telles, João Bernardo, and Miguel B. A. Metelo de Seixas. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1§ Conde de Oeiras, 1§ Marquěs de Pombal: Memória genealógica e heráldica nos trezentos anos do seu nascimento, 13 de Maio de 1699-13 de Maio de 1999. Oeiras, Portugal: Universidade Lusíada, Câmara Municipal de Oeiras, 1999. A record of Pombal’s genealogy, presented on the tercentenary of his birth. In Portuguese.

Maxwell, Kenneth. “Pombal and the Nationalization of the Portuguese Economy.” Hispanic American Historical Review 48, no. 4 (1968): 608-631. Reviews Pombal’s measures to make Portugal less dependent on Great Britain by strengthening Brazil within the Atlantic economy of Portugal and enhancing Portuguese entrepreneurial values.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Pombal: Paradox of the Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. An updated and complete account in English of the life and work of Pombal by a noted scholar of Portuguese history. Richly illustrated.

Schneider, Susan. The General Company of the Cultivation of the Vine of the Upper Douro: A Case Study of the Marquis of Pombal’s Economic Reform Program, 1756-1777. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1970. Traces the development of the port-wine industry under Pombal.

Theileman, Werner. Século XVIII: Século das luzes, século de Pombal. Frankfurt, Germany: TFM, 2001. Papers from a European conference on Pombal and the Enlightenment.