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Pombal, Paradox of the Enlightenment

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Kenneth Maxwell has given us one of the few available studies in english of one of the giants of the XVIII century, and it is worth every penny. An attractively bound book with both black and white and colour plates it is a valueable and beautiful reference. Maxwell's style is both scholarly and readable. Often forgotten, the dreaded Marques de Pombal was Portugal's Richelieu. A man to be feared and obeyed. Yet he was responceable for the increadable recovery of Lisbon in the wake of the cataclysmic earthquake of 1755. Lisbon, one of the great cities of the world was almost anihilated in less than a hour, and Portugal's very existence threatened. Pomabal's responce was brilliance itself; swift, courageous, and humane. While he did not utter the famous "let us bury the dead and care for the living" he was the man to put the sentiment into practise. He was also a ruthless and dangerous man. Any enemy of the state, real or imagined he viewed as a contagion, either to be cured or if not, eradicated. He was responsable for the most sweeping positive reforms Portugal had seen in centuries, and of gruesome excesses in the name of "the State". Towards the Jesuits, whom should have been his natural allies, he harboured only suspicion and hatred. Culminatting finally in an open attack upon them which would lead to their expulsion and eventual suppresion, a tragic loss for europe as a whole. While I still regard Pombal in an essentially negative way, a brilliant and inspired monster, but a monster nonetheless, this book helped me see the old devil in a new light, and to appreciate his devotion to his nation and countrymen. So, sip a glass of port, relax and meet the Marques.