page_title: Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal
section_title: Pombaline Reforms
hierarchical_section_title: Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal / Pombaline Reforms
context_page_description: Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal and 1st Count of Oeiras, known as the Marquis of Pombal, was a Portuguese statesman and diplomat who effectively ruled the Portuguese Empire from 1750 to 1777 as chief minister to King Joseph I. A liberal reformer influenced by the Age of Enlightenment, Pombal led Portugal's recovery from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and modernized the kingdom's administrative, economic, and ecclesiastical institutions. During his lengthy ministerial career, Pombal accumulated and exercised autocratic power.
  The son of a country squire and nephew of a prominent cleric, Pombal studied at the University of Coimbra before enlisting in the Portuguese Army, where he reached the rank of corporal. Pombal subsequently returned to academic life in Lisbon, but retired to his family's estates in 1733 after eloping with a nobleman's niece. In 1738, with his uncle's assistance, he secured an appointment as King John V's ambassador to Great Britain. In 1745, he was named ambassador to Austria and served until 1749. When Joseph I acceded to the throne in 1750, Pombal was appointed as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
context_section_description: The Pombaline Reforms were a series of reforms intended to make 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 unprogressive. It was a country of three million people in 1750. 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 South American territories, and the exhaustion of gold mines and diamond mines in Brazil.
  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 second attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe, after the Tokaj region of Hungary. 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 Pombal: 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.
caption: The Marquis of Pombal Enlightening and Rebuilding Lisbon, by Louis-Michel van Loo and Claude Joseph Vernet; 1766.
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