Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal

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Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal : biography

13 May 1699 – 8 May 1782

Because the Jesuits were the chief inquisitors in Portugal in the 18th century, Pombal’s efforts against their order was instrumental in weakening the grip of the Inquisition.Toby Green, ibid. Pombal was thus an important precursor for the suppression of the Jesuits throughout Europe and its colonies, The Rambler, Vol. III, 1855. which culminated in 1773, when European absolutists forced Pope Clement XIV to issue a bull empowering them to suppress the order in their domains.

Political career

In 1738, Melo received his first public appointment as the Portuguese ambassador to Great Britain. In 1745, he served as the Portuguese ambassador to Austria. The Queen consort of Portugal, Archduchess Mary Anne Josepha of Austria (1683–1754), was fond of him; after his first wife died she arranged for him to marry the daughter of the Austrian Field Marshal Leopold Josef, Count von Daun. King John, however, was not pleased and recalled him in 1749. John V died the following year and his son Joseph I of Portugal was crowned. Joseph I was fond of Melo; with the Queen Mother’s approval he appointed him as Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the King’s confidence in him increased, the King entrusted him with more control of the state. In 1740 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society By 1755, the King appointed him Prime Minister. Impressed by English economic success which he had witnessed as ambassador, he successfully implemented similar economic policies in Portugal. He abolished slavery in Portugal and the Portuguese colonies in India, reorganized the army and the navy, abolished the Autos-de-fé and ended the Limpeza de Sangue (cleanliness of blood) civil statutes and their discrimination against New Christians, the Jews that had converted to Christianity, and their descendents regardless of genealogical distance, in order to escape the Portuguese Inquisition.

Pombaline Reforms

The Pombaline Reforms were a series of reforms with the goal of making Portugal an economically self-sufficient and commercially strong nation, by means of expanding Brazilian territory, streamlining the administration of colonial Brazil, and fiscal and economic reforms both in the Colony and in Portugal.

During the Age of Enlightenment Portugal was considered small and lagging behind. It was a country of three million people in 1750; 200,000 people lived in the nation’s 538 monasteries. The economy of Portugal before the reforms was a relatively stable one, though it had become dependent on colonial Brazil for much of its economic support, and England for much of its manufacturing support, based on the Methuen Treaty of 1703. Even exports from Portugal went mostly through expatriate merchants like the English port wine shippers and French businessmen like Jácome Ratton, whose memoirs are scathing about the efficiency of his Portuguese counterparts.

The need to grow a manufacturing sector in Portugal was made more imperative by the excessive spending of the Portuguese crown, the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, the expenditures on wars with Spain for Brazilian territory, and the exhaustion of gold mines and diamond mines in Brazil.Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. His greatest reforms were, however, economic and financial, with the creation of several companies and guilds to regulate every commercial activity. He created the Douro Wine Company which demarcated the Douro wine region for production of Port, to ensure the wine’s quality; his was the first attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe. He ruled with a heavy hand, imposing strict laws upon all classes of Portuguese society, from the high nobility to the poorest working class, and via his widespread review of the country’s tax system. These reforms gained him enemies in the upper classes, especially among the high nobility, who despised him as a social upstart.

Further important reforms were carried out in education by Melo: he expelled the Jesuits in 1759, created the basis for secular public primary and secondary schools, introduced vocational training, created hundreds of new teaching posts, added departments of mathematics and natural sciences to the University of Coimbra, and introduced new taxes to pay for these reforms.