Ever hear of the Lisbon earthquake?
[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of an earlier post.]
This first time I ever read about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was in one of the volumes from Will and Ariel Durant’s humungous Story of Civilization series, which I came across while feeling bored one day during a stay at my in-laws’ house while I was helping my husband recover from knee surgery. Until then I’d never even heard of the Lisbon earthquake, although I was in my mid-twenties.
Like WWI and the 1918 flu epidemic, it was a cataclysmic event—not just because it killed a lot of people, but because of what it meant to those who survived. It was a case of that overused word: the narrative. If WWI precipitated a loss of faith in human progress, the Lisbon earthquake had precipitated a loss of faith in faith itself. As I wrote here:
How many remember anything about the great Lisbon Earthquake, fire, and tsunami of 1755, which struck at 9 AM on All Saints’ Day and virtually destroyed a city that was one of the major capitals of the world at the time, collapsing churches filled with worshippers and filling Europe with horror? The earthquake struck not only at the city and its inhabitants, but at the attitude of optimism that had characterized the first half of that century, and caused many to question their previously unshakeable faith in divine providence, advancing the Enlightenment and the science of seismology.
There have been many disasters that have killed more people; the entire death toll from the earthquake and its attendant sequela (tsunami and fire) was probably “only” about 100,000. But its psychological effects were much greater than the numbers would dictate, because of the time and place:
In the morning of November 1, 1755, a large earthquake struck Lisbon – a great city legendary for its wealth, prosperity and sophistication. It was Sunday and the religious holiday of All Saints. Most of Lisbon’s population of 250,000 were praying in six magnificent cathedrals, including the great Basilica de Sao Vincente de Fora. Within minutes, this great thriving city-port of Lisbon, capital of Portugal and of the vast Portuguese empire and seat of learning in Europe, was reduced to rubble by the two major shocks of this great earthquake and the waves of the subsequent catastrophic tsunami. A huge fire completed the destruction of the great city…
The destruction caused by the earthquake was beyond description. Lisbon’s great cathedrals, Basilica de Santa Maria, Sao Vincente de Fora, Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, the Misericordia – all full of worshipers – collapsed, killing thousands. Lisbon’s whole quay and the marble-built Cais De Pedra along the Tagus disappeared into the river, burying with it hundreds of people who had sought refuge.
The psychological and philosophical effects were profound:
The earthquake had wide-ranging effects on the lives of the populace and intelligentsia. The earthquake had struck on an important church holiday and had destroyed almost every important church in the city, causing anxiety and confusion amongst the citizens of a staunch and devout Roman Catholic city and country, which had been a major patron of the Church. Theologians would focus and speculate on the religious cause and message, seeing the earthquake as a manifestation of divine judgement. Most philosophers rejected that on the grounds that the Alfama, Lisbon’s red-light district, suffered only minor damage.
There are natural events that particularly resonate with the ethos of an age and help to shatter it. The flu and the war, and the Lisbon earthquake before it, had that effect. They are the quintessential Black Swans, the unforeseeable and uncontrollable events that help determine human destiny. And curiously, they are often forgotten (or nearly so) by posterity.
[NOTE: In this post I speculated on the reasons for what I call “the forgetting.”]
It’s like the Tower to Heaven. It was too high, so when the ground started to shake, it fell.
Any Empire that gets too large, cannot sustain its borders, and begins to shrink, will also begin to disappear soon enough.
It’s action, reaction.
100,000 of 250,000 is 40% mortality. Try that death rate on in NYC or LA today and see if there aren’t any psychological effects.
I wonder what Portugal’s total population was in 1755. Two million? it is currently 10 million.
If LA were similarly stricken today, 1% of the US population would be lost, as would perhaps a trillion dollars in property. Just to keep things to scale.
There are natural events and also events that can now be manufactured, events intended to shatter this age.
Obama with Congressional support is gutting our military and intentionally weakening our societal ability to respond to foreign aggression. He is facilitating the conditions that will lead to foreign aggression against America.
He is spending this country into economic collapse. He is severely impeding our nation’s ability to make economic progress.
He is facilitating social upheaval.
He is flooding the country with illegals who will place a grave burden upon our economy. Those same illegals present a clear and present danger to the nation’s health.
He has opened our borders to the infiltration of Islamic terrorists.
He is flouting the law and undermining the Constitution.
He with his leftist supporters are using the Executive and Congressional branches of our government to weaken America in order to fundamentally transform it into a Marxist society.
Natural events can be recovered from in fairly short order. Manufactured events are intended to be impossible to recover from… the “handwriting is on the wall” for those with eyes to see.
Geoffrey Britain:
My point, however, is that there are natural events (such as the Lisbon earthquake) from which we never recover, because they have more far-reaching effects than physical destruction and loss of life. The west has never recovered from the loss of faith engendered by the earthquake. Of course, the earthquake was not single-handedly responsible for that, but it had a huge effect on it.
neo,
I’m Portuguese on my father’s side and you, in your prior post brought to my attention the Lisbon Earthquake. Reading this update of that prior post, prompted me to do some more research into the societal conditions just prior to and after the Lisbon Earthquake.
Just a year prior to the earthquake, an individual as disruptive to Portuguese society as Obama today is to ours, rose to supreme power. The ‘Marquess of Pombal’ was a very harsh prime minister who was given free reign by Joseph I Portugal’s absolute monarch. The historical consensus is that Pombal basically ruled as a dictator in all but name. Pombal ruled in this manner until Joseph I’s death in 1777.
It is my contention that Portugal’s inability to fully recover from the Lisbon Earthquake had much to do with Pombal and Joseph I’s reign. Pombal’s ruthlessness [executed entire Noble families; men, women, children & grandchildren] in destroying any opposition and Joseph I’s truly ludicrous spending over a long period both before and during Pombal’s reign of terror destroyed Portugal’s former greatness.
I suspect that natural events rarely, if ever, are the primary factors in a society’s inability to recover from them. The robustness of a society after the natural event determines its ability to recover.
Geoffrey Britain:
That may indeed all be true, but that’s not what my interest was in the earthquake. What happened in Portugal re the physical recovery and its difficulties was independent, I believe, from the shock of the earthquake itself on European thought and beliefs in Christianity and the Age of Faith as a whole—the shock of the initial facts of it: that it struck disproportionately at the faithful, piously attending church.
Cut off the head of the snake, and the organization falls. With the church’s most famous and respected leaders dead, with their grassroots subordinates and NCOs dead, the organization cannot regenerate very well.
“…caused many to question their previously unshakeable faith in divine providence”
I believe that the earthquake was one of the inspirations for Voltaire’s Candide
The Lisbon earthquake fatally damaged popular belief in Divine Providence.
The near universal liberal support for the fascistic Obama has fatally damaged the idea that there can be a decent Left. The traditional assertion that leftists are sincere defenders of individual rights has been shown to be utterly false. This will have long-term consequences for civil society as more and more people cease to regard leftists as fellow Americans.
I head about the Lisbon Quake v from seeing “Candide” ) the Broadway revival when I was in junior high)–but all I actually one about it was that it killed a lot of people and essentially ended a major chunk of Portugal’s ability to colonize, and left her ripe for Napoleon’s picking many years later.
Human resources are the most valuable resources a nation can have, and it’s not quite as renewable as people think.
“What happened in Portugal re the physical recovery and its difficulties was independent, I believe, from the shock of the earthquake itself on European thought and beliefs in Christianity and the Age of Faith as a whole–the shock of the initial facts of it: that it struck disproportionately at the faithful, piously attending church.” neo
“The Lisbon earthquake fatally damaged popular belief in Divine Providence.” pst314
Not so fast guys. The shock of the earthquake itself on European thought and beliefs in Christianity and the Age of Faith as a whole, may have fatally damaged belief in Divine Providence among those already so inclined.
As a ‘portugee’ I’m free to take a hard look at my ancestor’s society. Many of those “faithful, piously attending church” were part of a society whose wealth had come from two sources. The slave trade and slave labor (black & Indian) in Brazil’s gold mines. Portugal was heavily involved in the slave trade. Native slave labor in Brazil’s gold mines made Portugal fabulously wealthy.
Note: The transatlantic slave trade was outlawed by Portugal in 1836, at the same time as other European powers, as a result of British pressure, who had banned the trade in 1808. Slavery within the African Portuguese colonies, however, was not abolished until 1869, following a treaty between United States and Britain for the suppression of the slave trade.
In 1755, basing an economy upon the selling of slaves and slave labor, while piously sending missionaries to ‘save their souls’ by bringing them to Jesus is blatant hypocrisy. I can’t imagine God being very pleased with the Portuguese of that time.
One thing that we tend to forget is that the ‘Enlightenment’ and Christianity were often hostile to each other. Many Europeans were already turning away from Christianity before the earthquake struck. For them, the earthquake striking down people ‘piously’ praying in church was likely confirmation of what they already believed.
Europe knew all of this and a typical reaction among many pious Europeans may not have been to question their faith at all but to assume that the Portuguese had merely reaped what they’d sown. Remember, for everyone but the Portuguese, it happened to the other guy, not to them. And they had no pictures, much less TV and video coverage, so once the initial shock of the news dissipated, I have to question how impactful the earthquake would actually have been.
Finally, if the “Lisbon earthquake fatally damaged popular belief in Divine Providence” how is the line, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” explained?
Although enormous natural disasters can change a society’s worldview, as neo-neocon suggests, I’m sympathetic to GB’s view that the really bad disasters are usually accompanied by institutional malfeasance.
The example of Zimbabwe springs to mind: the country used to be thought of as the “breadbasket of Africa,” but now imports food…and the quantities available don’t meet demand. The autocracy of Mugabe has led to a host of dysfunctions, not least of which is hyperinflation.
Zimbabwe has no national currency now. They use foreign currency exclusively.
Every country goes through ups and downs like Zimbabwe’s droughts. Sometimes, the stresses are extreme, as in the case of world wars or pandemics. Their ability to respond to stresses is a function of societal health and the robustness of the nation’s institutions.
I think we all know how thin the veneer is between us and system failure. A couple of years ago, there was this thing about interest rates, and suddenly 1/3 of the population lost their life savings. If we dwell on it, we become immobilized. It was after the Lisbon earthquake that the leader of the country was asked, what should we do? He said, we bury the dead and take care of the living. So yeah, that’s what we do. You want to always keep the worst-case scenarios in the back of your mind, but only in the back, not in the forefront. I think the conservative movement can get a little overwhelmed and even paralyzed thinking about worst-case scenarios.
It’s also worth noting that conservatives have the advantage of being non-utopian. We’re aware that civilization is like those plate-spinning acts on The Ed Sullivan Show, with 15 plates twirling on sticks. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that sooner or later, something’s going to fall. (We may even be able to guess which plate will hit the ground first, but does that even matter?) Dems seem to believe that the plates will always keep spinning, no matter whether we stabilize them or step back and watch them – or even if we bump up against the table. Truth is, it takes an effort and luck to keep things spinning.
Actually, the Lisbon earthquake occurred on (Nov. 1. 1755) a Saturday.
Yes, I first learned of the Lisbon earthquake while reading Candide. WRT the 1918 influenza pandemic, I first learned of it from Harpo Marx’s autobiography.
America and its politicians helped ensure Rhodesia became Zimb right now. Yet that’s not taught in the history books, even while Americans clamor for WWII history texts in the defeated nations.
Another example of American perspective.
“Theologians would focus and speculate on the religious cause and message, seeing the earthquake as a manifestation of divine judgement. Most philosophers rejected that on the grounds that the Alfama, Lisbon’s red-light district, suffered only minor damage.”
After the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 someone wrote a bit of doggerel:
“If as some say God spanked the town for being over-frisky
Why did He burn the churches down and save Hotaling’s whiskey?”
(Hotaling’s was a prominent liquor warehouse that escaped damage).
Atheists, real ones, have posited that the Throne of God is empty because God is not there or was replaced by the Devil.
The true believers on the Christian side think the King that rules the Earth is not God, but Satan, and that only the righteous ones will be chosen at Armageddon, to be in God’s Kingdom ruled by Jesus Christ rather than corrupt humans or Satan.
The theology stuff is at a higher level than what the barely literate consume in tabloids and mass media publications. Most people have significantly different beliefs than the minorities.
Ymarsaker
“Atheists, real ones, have posited that the Throne of God is empty because God is not there or was replaced by the Devil.”
What planet?
re: Voltaire and the Lisbon earthquake
There is an excellent course about Voltaire at The Great Courses by Prof. Alan Charles Kors. (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/voltaire-and-the-triumph-of-the-enlightenment.html) From the course guide for lecture 6: