1755 Lisbon earthquake

The **1755 Lisbon earthquake** was a major earthquake that hit Portugal and the rest of the Iberian Peninsula on 1 November 1755. The earthquake caused serious damage to Lisbon. It killed an estimated 60,000 people in  Lisbon alone. Violent shaking destroyed about 12,000 homes. Because November 1, when the quake struck, was All Saints' Day, many people were attending mass at the time of the quake. Churches collapsed and many people died.

The earthquake caused a tsunami that produced waves about 20 feet (6 metres) high in Lisbon. Shocks from the earthquake were felt throughout Europe. The disaster became an important event in European history.

## Related pages

- 1755 Cape Ann earthquake

## References

- Benjamin, Walter. "The Lisbon Earthquake." In _Selected Writings_ vol. 2. Belknap, 1999. .  The often abstruse critic Benjamin gave a series of radio broadcasts for children in the early 1930s; this one, from 1931, discusses the Lisbon earthquake and summarizes some of its impact on European thought.
- Braun, Theodore E. D., and John B. Radner, eds. _The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Representations and Reactions_ (_SVEC_ 2005:02).  Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2005.  .  Recent scholarly essays on the earthquake and its representations in art, with a focus on Voltaire.  (In English and French.)
- Brooks, Charles B. _Disaster at Lisbon: The Great Earthquake of 1755_. Long Beach: Shangton Longley Press, 1994.  (No apparent ISBN.) A narrative history.
- Chase, J. "The Great Earthquake at Lisbon (1755)". Colliers Magazine, 1920.
- Dynes, Russell Rowe. "The dialogue between Voltaire and Rousseau on the Lisbon earthquake: The emergence of a social science view." University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center, 1999.
- Fonseca, J. D. _1755, O Terramoto de Lisboa, The Lisbon Earthquake_. Argumentum, Lisbon, 2004.
- Gunn, A.M. "Encyclopedia of Disasters". Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. .
- Hamacher, Werner. "The Quaking of Presentation." In _Premises: Essays on Philosophy and Literature from Kant to Celan_, pp. 261–293. Stanford University Press, 1999. .
- Kendrick, T.D. _The Lisbon Earthquake_. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1957.
- Molesky, Mark.  _This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason._  New York: Knopf, 2015.
- Neiman, Susan. _Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Modern Philosophy_. Princeton University Press, 2002.  This book centers on philosophical reaction to the earthquake, arguing that the earthquake was responsible for modern conceptions of evil.
- Paice, Edward. _Wrath of God: The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755_. London: Quercus, 2008.
- Pereira, A.S. "The Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake". Discussion Paper 06/03, Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York, York University, 2006.
- Quenet, Grégory. _Les tremblements de terre en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. La naissance d'un risque_. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005.
- Ray, Gene. "Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime." _Yale Journal of Criticism_ 17.1 (2004): pp. 1–18.
- Seco e Pinto, P.S. (Editor). _Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering: Proceedings of the Second International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 21–25 June 1999_.
- Shrady, Nicholas. _The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin & Reason in The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755_, Penguin, 2008,
- Weinrich, Harald. "Literaturgeschichte eines Weltereignisses: Das Erdbeben von Lissabon." In _Literatur für Leser_, pp. 64–76. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1971. .  In German. Cited by Hamacher as a broad survey of philosophical and literary reactions to the Lisbon earthquake.

## Infobox (earthquake)

- **title**: 1755 Lisbon earthquake
- **name**: 1755 Lisbon earthquake
- **image**: 1755 Lisbon earthquake.jpg
- **caption**: 1755 copper engraving showing Lisbon in flames and a tsunami overwhelming the ships in the harbor
- **fault**: Azores-Gibraltar Transform Fault
- **pre-1900**: yes
- **casualties**: 30,000–50,000 deaths
- **intensity**: Mercalli intensity scale, XI (_Extreme_)
- **location**:
About  west-southwest of Cape St. Vincent and about  southwest of Lisbon
- **countries affected**: Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal, Enlightenment in Spain, Spain, and Morocco. The tsunami affected Southern Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland
- **magnitude**: 8.5–9.0 Moment magnitude scale, M<sub>w</sub> (est.)
- **local-time**: 09:40
- **local-date**: 1 November 1755
- **map**: 1755_Lisbon_Earthquake_Location.png