section_path: History/Pombaline era and Enlightenment
section_name: Pombaline era and Enlightenment
paragraph_text: Pombaline era and Enlightenment
  
  In 1738 Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later ennobled as 1st Marquis of Pombal, began a career as the Portuguese Ambassador in London, later in Vienna. King Joseph I was crowned in 1750 and made him his Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the King's confidence in Carvalho e Melo increased, he entrusted him with more control of the state. By 1755, Carvalho e Melo was made prime minister. Impressed by British economic success witnessed as Ambassador, he successfully implemented similar economic policies in Portugal.
  
  In 1761, during the reign of King José I, he banned the import of black slaves into mainland Portugal and India, not for humanitarian reasons, but because they were a necessary work force in Brazil. At the same time, he encouraged the trade of black slaves ("the pieces", in the terms of that time) to that colony, and with the support and direct involvement of the Marquis of Pombal, two companies were founded - the Companhia do Grão-Pará e Maranhão and the Companhia Geral de Pernambuco e Paraíba - whose main activity was the trafficking of slaves, mostly Africans, to Brazilian lands.
  
  He reorganised the army and navy and ended legal discrimination against different Christian sects. He created companies and guilds to regulate commercial activity and one of the first appellation systems by demarcating the region for production of Port to ensure the wine's quality. This was the first attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe. He imposed strict law upon all classes of Portuguese society, along with a widespread review of the tax system. These reforms gained him enemies in the upper classes.
  
  Lisbon was struck by a major earthquake on 1 November 1755, magnitude estimated to have been between 7.7 and 9.0, with casualties ranging from 12,000 to 50,000. Following the earthquake, Joseph I gave his prime minister more power, and Carvalho de Melo became an enlightened despot. In 1758 Joseph I was wounded in an attempted assassination. The Marquis of Távora, several members of his family and even servants were tortured and executed in public with extreme brutality (even by the standards of the time), as alleged part of the Távora affair.
  
  The following year, the Jesuits were suppressed and expelled. This crushed opposition by publicly demonstrating even the aristocracy was powerless before Pombal. Further titled "Marquês de Pombal" in 1770, he ruled Portugal until Joseph I's death in 1777. The new ruler, Queen Maria I of Portugal, disliked Pombal because of his excesses, and upon her accession to the throne, withdrew all his political offices. Pombal was banished to his estate at Pombal, where he died in 1782.
  
  Historians argue that Pombal's "enlightenment," while far-reaching, was primarily a mechanism for enhancing autocracy at the expense of individual liberty and especially an apparatus for crushing opposition, suppressing criticism, and furthering colonial exploitation and consolidating personal control, and profit.