Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo , since 1759 Conde de Oeiras, since 1769 Marquês de Pombal (born May 13, 1699 in Lisbon , † May 8, 1782 in Pombal ) was during the reign of King Joseph I from 1756 First Minister of Portugal and the most important Portuguese statesman of the 18th century. Based on the thinking of the Enlightenment , he tried to bring Portugal, still medieval in many ways, into the modern age with an extensive reform program .
Life
Carvalho e Melo studied at the University of Coimbra . In 1738 he became the Portuguese ambassador in London , seven years later the Portuguese ambassador in Vienna . In 1750 he was appointed Foreign Minister by King Joseph I.
On November 1st, 1755, the capital was almost completely destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake . Foreign Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo organized the reconstruction. After proving his organizational skills, he was appointed First Minister in 1756. The king was not particularly interested in government business and gave Carvalho e Melo as much as possible a free hand so that he became the actual ruler of the country. Pombal laid the foundation for Portugal's entry into the modern age. In place of traditional clerical politics, the later Marquês put an enlightened absolutism .
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This soon aroused resistance from the Catholic Church . The Jesuits preached that the earthquake was God's punishment for reform. On September 3, 1758 there was an assassination attempt on Joseph. Coming from a shepherd's hour with his mistress , the king was without an escort on his way home to Ajuda , where he had resided in a tent city since the earthquake. He was ambushed and shot. The perpetrators were caught and tortured for being hired by the Tavora family . The Tavoras belonged to the high nobility and were in sharp opposition to the Marquês de Pombal. He took the opportunity to charge the entire family with high treason. Even Leonora de Tavora's teacher, the Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida , was arrested, strangled as a heretic after a show trial and then burned at the stake in Rossio Square. On January 13, 1759, almost the entire Tavora family was executed, their property confiscated and their name deleted from the register of nobility. In 1759 the Jesuit order in Portugal and Brazil was dissolved, and in the same year Pombal received the title “Conde de Oeiras” from the king for his work after the earthquake .
Pombal abolished slavery in Portugal and the Indian colonies in 1761 in order to direct the slave trade to Brazil , where labor was needed on the sugar and coffee plantations. All remaining legal discrimination between the Cristãos-Novos (new Christians, the baptized Jews ) and the Cristãos-Velhos (old Christians) was lifted, censorship was transferred from the church to the state, the Inquisition placed under the supervision of the state . A science faculty was founded at the University of Coimbra, a state school system was established, and the Indians in Brazil were emancipated.
With protectionist measures, Pombal attempted to strengthen national manufactories and to overcome economic dependence on foreign countries, especially England. He founded state-owned monopoly companies, granted concessions to local entrepreneurs and set up various state-controlled trading companies with monopoly character. As early as 1756, he created the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro , which received the wine-growing monopoly in the delimited area of the Alto Douro . It was the first protected wine-growing region in the world. He also focused on reforming the country's financial system.
Pombal ensured that more Portuguese were settled in Brazil and promoted the Brazilian trade through the establishment of trading companies, e.g. B. 1755 the Companhia Geral de Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão and a year later the Companhia Geral de Comércio de Pernambuco e Paraíba. Both agriculture and trade experienced an upswing during this period, the financial situation of the state improved considerably, and the foreign trade deficit with England was made good.
In 1769, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo was appointed the first "Marquês de Pombal", he received the title of Marquise of Lisbon . In 1777, Pombal's great patron, King Joseph I, died, and his daughter Maria I, together with her husband and uncle, Peter III. , the Portuguese throne. The new queen was very pious, so the anti-clerical policy of the Marquês de Pombal was anathema to her. Hardly on the throne, she released Pombal and placed him under house arrest on his country estate.
reception
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The work of the Marquês de Pombal is still controversial today. On the one hand, he went down in Portuguese history as a great modernizer who undeniably laid the foundation for the modern Portuguese state. He reformed education policy and placed it under state control, and thus outside of direct church influence. Its profound changes, such as the prohibition of slavery in the motherland, the reform of the Inquisition, the prohibition of discrimination against new Christians ( Marranos and others), or the standardization of the legal system were signs of a completely new state that was guided by new social ideas. Pombal placed individual strengths and merits above inherited and inherited privileges, possessions and legitimations. And while the elites had limited themselves to the consumption of the shrinking income from their possessions overseas and the motherland, Pombal now promoted production and efficient trade in order to achieve adequate state finances and thus to expand the ability of the royal state to act and assert itself. For example, the protected wine-growing regions that are common internationally today go back to his law relating to the Alto Douro in 1756.
On the other hand, he literally walked over dead bodies and was ready to enforce his policy by force against conservative elements. A large number of his reforms were reversed or weakened after the end of his 25-year reform policy, which hardly allows a conclusive assessment of his work. Nevertheless, his peace treaty with Spain, the subsequent territorial expansion of Brazil, and the effects of its mercantilist policies on state finances had strengthened Portugal's position in the long term. The effect of his policies on the intellectual and political climate in Portugal continued, as did a large number of administrative reforms that had not been withdrawn. The enlightened politics of Pombal, despite its ruthless approach and relentless absolutism, made the future liberalization and modernization of the country possible.
“The rule of Pombal had the great merit of preparing the country for the liberal revolution of the 19th century. Both the church and the nobility received a blow from which they never recovered. At the same time, the bourgeoisie (businessmen and civil servants) were given the power they needed to take over the administration and economic power of the country. By leveling all classes, laws and institutions before the despotism of the king, Pombal prepared the social revolution and the end of feudal privileges [...] "
See also
literature
- Bernhard Duhr : Pombal: His character and his politics according to the reports of the imperial ambassadors in the secret state archive in Vienna. A contribution to the history of absolutism. Herder, Freiburg 1891, DNB 363582010 .
- Jorge Borges de Macedo: O marquês de Pombal (1699–1782). Lisbon 1982.
- Thomas Freund: Pombal myths in Portuguese literature. Com um resumo em português: “Mitos pombalinos na literatura portuguesa”. Klein, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-926135-04-2 .
- Kenneth R. Maxwell: Pombal. Paradox of the Enlightenment. Cambridge 1995.
- Christian Frey: How Portugal and Spain wiped out the Jesuits. In: The world . July 7, 2015
Web links
- Literature by and about Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello in the catalog of the German National Library
- Entry on Carvalho e Mello, Sebastian Joseph de (1699 - 1782), Marquis of Pombal in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
Individual evidence
- ^ To Father Gabriel Malagrida
- ↑ Michael Zeuske : Handbook History of Slavery. A global story from the beginning until today . De Gruyter, New York / Berlin 2013, p. 123 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
- ↑ Walther L.Bernecker, Horst Pietschmann: history of Portugal. Beck, Munich 2001, page 69f, ISBN 3-406-44756-2 .
- ↑ Reinhold Schneider describes these two pages of the Marquês de Pombal in his story from 1931 The Earthquake .
- ↑ Walther L.Bernecker, Horst Pietschmann: history of Portugal. Beck, Munich 2001, p. 71, ISBN 3-406-44756-2 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mello, Sebastião José de Carvalho e |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello; Marquês de Pombal |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Head of Government of Portugal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 13, 1699 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lisbon |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 8, 1782 |
| Place of death | Pombal |