Grégory Quenet
42
cial causes, namely the combustion of pockets of gas trapped in cracks
in the Earth’s crust; and he compared this process to the thick smoke
released by candlesticks when a flame is brought near the wax.
13
Returning to the Lisbon disaster, the shock it caused had less
to do with the levelling of a city per se than it did with the destruction
of what Lisbon in particular represented for contemporaries. Seismic
activity was regular in the Lisbon area, the city having suffered seven
earthquakes in the fourteenth century, seven again in the sixteenth
century, three of which were very violent (1,500 houses destroyed in
1531; 2,000 dead in 1551; three streets swallowed up in 1597), a further three in the seventeenth century, and two more in the first half of
the eighteenth century (in 1724 and 1750).
14 Yet these events were little known outside the Iberian peninsula, and Portugal was not regarded as a particularly seismic region. In France, news-sheets,
periodicals and literary texts prior to 1755 do not mention Lisbon or
Portugal as seismic zones, whereas earthquakes occurring in Italy and
the Eastern Mediterranean are frequently cited.
15 The truly extraordinary nature of the disaster of 1 November 1755 only seems greater as
a result of this. In the stories published about it, the seismic violence
overshadows the tsunami and the fire which nonetheless caused the
majority of the devastation.
16 Other earthquakes in the early modern
period attracted scientific comment, such as those in China in 1699,
London in 1750, and Lima in 1751; but none allowed for the mass
participation in the event which characterized the Lisbon disaster and
which made it a founding date of European consciousness.
An Unprecedented Participation in the Event
Contemporaries were as much struck by the tremors that affected
Europe for several months afterwards as they were by the Lisbon
earthquake itself. The effects of the seism of 1 November 1755 were
___________________________
13 Cited in Gabriel Gohau, Les sciences de la terre aux XVII
e et XVIII
e siècles. Naissance
de la géologie (Paris: Albin Michel, 1990), pp. 80-81.
14 José Augusto Franca, Une Ville des Lumières, la Lisbonne de Pombal (Paris:
Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1988), p. 52.
15 The remark does not really apply after 1755 when contemporaries trawled through
history to find traces of earlier earthquakes at Lisbon.
16 Augusto Franca, Une Ville des Lumières, pp. 58-59.
42
cial causes, namely the combustion of pockets of gas trapped in cracks
in the Earth’s crust; and he compared this process to the thick smoke
released by candlesticks when a flame is brought near the wax.
13
Returning to the Lisbon disaster, the shock it caused had less
to do with the levelling of a city per se than it did with the destruction
of what Lisbon in particular represented for contemporaries. Seismic
activity was regular in the Lisbon area, the city having suffered seven
earthquakes in the fourteenth century, seven again in the sixteenth
century, three of which were very violent (1,500 houses destroyed in
1531; 2,000 dead in 1551; three streets swallowed up in 1597), a further three in the seventeenth century, and two more in the first half of
the eighteenth century (in 1724 and 1750).
14 Yet these events were little known outside the Iberian peninsula, and Portugal was not regarded as a particularly seismic region. In France, news-sheets,
periodicals and literary texts prior to 1755 do not mention Lisbon or
Portugal as seismic zones, whereas earthquakes occurring in Italy and
the Eastern Mediterranean are frequently cited.
15 The truly extraordinary nature of the disaster of 1 November 1755 only seems greater as
a result of this. In the stories published about it, the seismic violence
overshadows the tsunami and the fire which nonetheless caused the
majority of the devastation.
16 Other earthquakes in the early modern
period attracted scientific comment, such as those in China in 1699,
London in 1750, and Lima in 1751; but none allowed for the mass
participation in the event which characterized the Lisbon disaster and
which made it a founding date of European consciousness.
An Unprecedented Participation in the Event
Contemporaries were as much struck by the tremors that affected
Europe for several months afterwards as they were by the Lisbon
earthquake itself. The effects of the seism of 1 November 1755 were
___________________________
13 Cited in Gabriel Gohau, Les sciences de la terre aux XVII
e et XVIII
e siècles. Naissance
de la géologie (Paris: Albin Michel, 1990), pp. 80-81.
14 José Augusto Franca, Une Ville des Lumières, la Lisbonne de Pombal (Paris:
Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1988), p. 52.
15 The remark does not really apply after 1755 when contemporaries trawled through
history to find traces of earlier earthquakes at Lisbon.
16 Augusto Franca, Une Ville des Lumières, pp. 58-59.