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May 20, 2025 • 63 mins
Today we discuss one of the most powerful earthquakes to strike Europe in recorded history, an earthquake which knocked down Lisbon in a single, violent day in 1755. The aftershocks would be felt throughout history, however, as a shocked Europe came to terms with the power of nature. What might have happened if it went a little differently?
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to The History Guy podcast Counterfactuals. What is a
counterfactual in the context of studying history. It is a
kind of analysis where we examined what might have happened
had historical events gone differently as a thought experiment. The
goal is to learn and understand history as it is
by talking about what it could have been as a

(00:27):
twist on the historical stories that we tell on the
History Guy YouTube channel. This is a series of podcasts
that dwell on that eternal question what if. I'm Josh,
a writer for the YouTube channel and son of the
History Guy. If you're a fan of the channel, you
already know Lance the History Guy himself. To liven up
our discussions on what might have happened, we have invited

(00:48):
Brad wagnan history officionado and a longtime friend of The
History Guy, to join us. Remember that if you'd like
to support us, you can find us on Patreon, YouTube
andlocals dot com. Join us as we discuss what deserves
to be remembered and what might have been Today, we
discussed one of the most powerful earthquakes to strike Europe

(01:08):
in recorded history, an earthquake which knocked down Lisbon in
a single violent day in seventeen fifty five. The aftershocks
would be felt throughout history. However, as a shocked Europe
came to terms with the power of nature. But what
might have happened if it all went a bit differently?
Without further ado, will let me introduce the history guy.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
It was November first, seventeen fifty five, and an Anglican clergyman,
Reverend Charles Davy, had just finished writing some letters. He
later described that morning. There never was a finer morning
scene than the first of November. The sun shone in
all its full luster. The whole face of the sky
was serene and clear, with not the least signal of
warning of the approaching event. That event was the Great

(01:59):
Earthquake of Lisbon, and it's one of the most important
in the history of Europe. It not only changed the
face of one of the Europe's greatest cities, but it
also transformed the politics and economics of the entire continent.
It sparked entire new lines of philosophical inquiry during the
age of Enlightenment, and it caused the creation of a
brand new science that is still developing today. It is

(02:22):
history that deserves to be remembered. While the once vast
Portuguese Empire had been reduced significantly by the eighteenth century,
in mid century of Portugal was still a world power
and its capital, Lisbon, a center of trade. A significant
part of that had to do with the discovery of
gold in Portugal's most lucrative remaining colony, Brazil, in the
sixteen nineties, filed by the discovery of diamonds in the

(02:43):
seventeen twenties, so many Portuguese immigrated to Brazil, as many
as four hundred thousand for the gold rush that the
country was deprived of labour, and King John the Fifth
had to ban further immigration in seventeen oh nine. The
mines were also fed by the Transatlantic slave trade, and
some half a million half Fricans were kidnapped into slavery
to work in the mines, so well as untold numbers

(03:04):
of indigenous Indian slaves. The impacts of gold mining on
the environment and demographics of Brazil were profound. The mines
were lucrative, producing an estimated three hundred and fifty thousand
ounces of gold a year. Officially, one thousand metric tons
of gold flowed into Portugal from the Brazilian mines in
the eighteenth century, and that much again may have come
in without being recorded.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
By some estimates.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
In the eighteenth century, eighty percent of the gold in
Europe originated from Brazil. A significant amount of that went
to the crown. The government levied attacks of twenty percent
on all gold extracted, called the Royal fifths. While collection
of the tax was difficult, the penalty if caught evading
the tax was to have all your gold confiscated, and
revenues from confiscation exceeded revenues from the tax. In addition,

(03:46):
and estimated two point four million carrots of diamonds were
imported from Brazil, which ruled the world diamond markets in
the eighteenth century. The result was a great enrichment for
the crown. Portuguese merchants also grew wealthy, providing goods as
cloth and metalwares, and of course, slaves obtained in Africa.
Portugal was able to pay off debts from years of
wars with the Dutch and British, and by mid century

(04:09):
Portugal was thriving and Lisbon, its capital and largest city,
was a center of international trade. Lisbon is located at
the mouth of the Tagus River, the longest river on
the Iberian Peninsula. It has a spacious, protected natural harbor
that is made it an important seaport and center for trade,
with indications of permanent settlement as early as twenty five
hundred BC. Lisbon is among the oldest cities in Western Europe.

(04:31):
At the turn of the eighteenth century, Lisbon was, by
some accounts the fifth largest city in Europe, larger than
Rome or Madrid or Vienna. A late medieval city dominated
by the Ribeira Palace, the two hundred fifty year old
main residence of the Kings of Portugal, Lisbon in seventeen
fifty five had a population of some two hundred thousand.
It was a city dominated by trade, as evidenced by

(04:52):
the placement of the palace along the banks of the
Tagus River near the docks and shipyards. Ribeira Palace translates
as Palace of the Riverside flush from Brazilian gold. King
John the Fifth had expanded the palace and transformed its
chapel into a massive Baroque church at the beginning of
the century. His successor, Joseph the First, had built the
Royal opera house attached to the palace in seventeen fifty five.

(05:16):
The opera had opened in March with an opera by
composer the vide Perez. Much of the city was built
using the distinct sixteenth century Portuguese Manulin style. Named after
King Emanuel the First, Lisbon was a devout Catholic city
and had numerous cathedrals, monasteries and seventy two convents. The
Church of Santa Angracia had been under construction since sixteen

(05:36):
eighty two, so long that Oglas de Santa Angracia became
the Portuguese term for never ending construction project. Lisbon in
seventeen fifty five was also a city of notorious wealth disparity,
where the poor lived in terrible conditions and so had
a reputation for being dirty. November first was All Saints Day,
and much of the population of the city would have
been at church. The royal family had celebrated a sunrise Mass,

(05:58):
but had left the city as one of the king's
daughters wanted to spend the holiday on the coast. It
was a bright, clear morning and most of the population
of Lisbon was celebrating mass. The first inkling of what
was to come came at approximately nine thirty in the morning,
Reverend Davy wrote, I was sat down in my apartment,
just finishing a letter, when the papers and table I

(06:19):
was writing on began to tremble, with a gentle motion,
which rather surprised me, as I could not perceive a
breath of wind stirring. Christian Stockgaler, the console of the
German city of Hamburg, said, first we heard a rumble
like the noise of a carriage. But then the noise grew.
It became louder and louder, until it was as loud
as the loudest noise of a gun. Immediately after that
we felt the first tremble. At nine point forty all

(06:42):
the church bells started ringing. Accounts vary, but the shaking
lasted between three and six minutes. Modern estimates are that
the quake had a magnitude between eight point five to
nine using the moment magnitude scale, releasing in essence a
thousand times as much energy as the two thousand ten
Haiti earthquake. The first great shock was felt over an

(07:03):
area between one point two and one point four million
square miles. The shaking was felt as far away as
Finland and North Africa, Northern Italy and the Azores in
the mid Atlantic. According to author Mark Molsky, the earthquak
released four hundred and seventy five megatons of energy, the
equivalent of thirty two thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs. He noted

(07:27):
in an interview with National Public Radio in twenty fifteen
that it was the largest earthquake to hit Europe in
the last ten thousand years. They've observed that with regard
to the buildings, it was observed that the solidest in
general fell the first. Massive stone structures have little flexibility
to absorb shock. The churches and cathedrals, full of parishioners

(07:47):
collapsed on themselves, crushing the people inside. The sky became
as dark as night from the clouds of dust and debris.
A significant aftershot hit around ten and more buildings crumbled.
The streets were full of people and animals killed by
falling rubble. Many, including Reverend Davy, headed for the docks,
where they would be relatively safe from debris. There they
beheld a bewildering sight. The Tagus River had receded. They

(08:10):
could see the river bottom littered with old shipwrecks. The
people had no idea how to interpret this tsunamis in
the Atlantic are exceedingly rare. Some people even ventured down,
hoping to retrieve treasure from the wrecked ships. The tsunami
hit at approximately ten After ten, a wave twelve meters
nearly forty feet high came in. As the Reverend described it,
like a mountain, so fast that, by multiple accounts, people

(08:32):
on horseback tried to outrun it had to gallop at
full speed. The tidal waves raced up the course of
the river and swept away the docks and at least
hundreds of people who had sought refuge there. Reverend Davy
narrowly escaped, holding on to a huge fallen beam. The
water rushed back, and then came again two more times.
The tsunami was huge. Waves as high as twenty meters
hit the coast of Morocco, where as many as ten

(08:53):
thousand people were killed. Three meter waves hit the coast
of England and Ireland, enough to cause damage. Four meter
waves hit illands of the Caribbean, and a careful review
of records reveals the tsunami reached the coast of Brazil.
The smoke was rising even before the waves receded. The
city had been lit by candle and lamp, and thousands
of candles had been lit for All Saints' Day. The

(09:15):
rubble began to burn. Many fires joined into a single blaze,
burning the parts of the city that had survived the
earthquake and tsunami, and killing those trapped in the rubble.
The fire raged for five days, creating a firestorm, a
fire so bad that it creates its own wind. It
sucked up so much air that people one hundred yards
from the blaze asphyxiated. The destruction was terrible. Among the

(09:37):
buildings burned to the ground where the Royal Hospital of
All Saints, the largest hospital in Portugal, where hundreds of
patients were killed in the blaze. The Opera House was
in ruins. The Ribera Palace gutted, and with it was lost.
The seventy thousand volume Royal Library, with hundreds of priceless
works of art, original manuscripts, and details of early Portuguese
explorers like Vasco da Gamma were lost. So many records

(09:59):
were lost that the entire history of the nation was truncated.
The British Special Envoy to the King of Portugal, Abraham Casters,
later wrote that the fire has done ten times more
mischief than the earthquake itself. The assessments of the damage vary.
Conservative estimates are that ten percent of the structures in
the city were destroyed outright, and at least two thirds
of the buildings throughout the city so damaged is to

(10:21):
be uninhabitable. Other estimates as hurt that as much as
eighty five to ninety percent of the buildings in the
city were destroyed. Reverend Davy described the city every parish, church, convent, nunnery,
palace and public edifice, with an infinite number of private
houses were either thrown down or so miserably shattered that
it was rendered dangerous to pass by them. Caster's letter

(10:41):
to England described this opulent city now reduced to a
heap of rubbish and ruins. Davy quoted a contemporary estimate
of sixty thousand dead. Although those estimates may be exaggerated
and Lisbon was not the only city effected with significant
damage throughout the Southern Portugal and North Africa, the scope
of the damage was a shock in the age of Enlightenment,

(11:02):
and the implications discussed throughout the continent. Religious thinkers saw
the catastrophe as a repudiation of the science of the
age and asserted that it was a divine punishment come
exited on an important feast day and laying waste to
all the great cathedrals of the city, which ironically were
more prone to destruction as a city center was built
on sedimentary soil that was more subject to the process

(11:22):
of liquefaction. Protestant writers described it as retribution for the
Portuguese Inquisition, and Catholic writers sought his God's rage against
the free thinkers and atheists living in the Portuguese capital city,
sparking backlash against foreigners like the mostly Protestant British priests
and monks stood in the streets screaming for people to repent,
adding to the panic. The great philosopher Voltaire found the

(11:44):
divine punishment idea ridiculous, asking why Lisbon is Lisbon worse
than other cities? Is there more sin and evil in
Lisbon than in Paris or London. Instead, he used it
to attack the philosophy of optimism represented by people like
English poet Alexander Pope, who asserted that everything happens for good,
arguing instead that the existence of evil is a fact
that must be accepted. Jean Jaques Rousseau sought as a

(12:06):
repudiation of large cities and sought as a call to
go back to nature. But another reaction was unique. While
small numbers of scholars had discussed such disasters as natural
events in the past, in the age of Enlightenment, with
a greater idea to publish ideas, for the first time,
earthquakes were seen widely as natural phenomena to be studied,
an idea that challenged the foundation of the power of

(12:28):
the Church in Europe. Unfortunately, these discussions were mostly fruitless.
Emmanuel can't suppose that volcanic action was due to the
subterranean combination of sulfur and iron. Other hypotheses had to
do with air circulation in the crust of the earth,
tremors as a result of electric discharge, or the spontaneous
explosion of gases in the underground. The discussion of earthquakes

(12:48):
as a natural phenomena with scientific explanation was a tectonic
shift in itself, but the theorist of the day could
not envision plate tectonics, and their discussion provided little understanding.
Estments are that the earthquake cost Portugal the equivalent of
almost half of their gross domestic product sped the decline
of their empire. By the end of the eighteenth century,

(13:10):
the empire that had been described as the world's first
global empire was a tiny shadow of itself, transforming Europe
and the world forever. King Joseph first considered it a
miracle that his family had escaped the earthquake, but he
became claustrophobic and paranoid of walls. The royal court was
moved into a group of tents on a hillside, and

(13:30):
the royal family never moved back to Robera Palace, although
there was enough of the structure left to rebuild, the
two and a half century old palace of the Kings
of Portugal was demolished. Joseph was never much interested in governing,
and after the earthquake he gave his Prime Minister Sebastio
Jose de Carvallo Immello complete power, making him the Marquees
de Pombal, ruling as a de facto King. Bomball took

(13:53):
many steps following the earthquake, organizing firefighters to extinguish the blaze,
restoring law and order by hanging looters, using the army
to keep the people from abandoning the city as they
needed them to rebuild, moving quickly to dispose of the
bodies of the dead to prevent disease, and rebuilding the
city on a new modern plan that included new architecture
known as the Pombaline style that was some of the

(14:14):
first construction ever built to resist earthquakes using flexible wooden structure.
Using his power, Pomball engaged in numerous reforms, but also
used that power to attack his enemies, becoming a virtual dictator.
Perhaps most importantly, Pomball sent throughout the country a series
of detailed questions about the earthquake, what climate happened, how

(14:36):
long it shook, what direction it came from, what direction
buildings fell when the tsunami hit, how tall the tsunami was,
and that data allowed a scientific reconstruction of the event
and thus is seen as the foundation of the science
of seismology, the scientific study of earthquakes, and that discipline
still today continues to try to understand and predict seismic

(14:58):
events their effects.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Now for the fun part, where I the History Guy
himself and longtime friend of the History Guy, Brad Wagnan
get to talk about what might have happened if this
all went a little differently, so Portugal, which is kind
of this tiny country nowadays. You know, I don't think
a lot of people think about Portugal all that often.
We talked about how people think about the Roman Empire.

(15:24):
You might think about the Portuguese Empire from the past,
and they were at one point an incredibly powerful empire
and a lot of stuff happened, and one of them
is the subject of this podcast today, where we talk
about this earthquake, which was a remarkable event that had

(15:45):
an incredible impact on European history, and I think it's crazy,
like I mean, kind of like when we talked about
we talked about a volcano. We think Tambora. The kind
of spider web of impacts that you can trace from
a single natural event like this is truly incredible.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
I mean, you can talk about natural because natural disasters
do change history. And it's actually gonna fit for here
to say, what if there hadn't been that disaster. But
this is a major powerful European state, and this is
its major powerful capital, and it was devastated, you know,
on Palm Sunday, right, I mean, and you know, everybody's
in church and that and it literally destroyed the between

(16:27):
the earthquake and the tsunami, it literally destroyed the city.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Uh, and so its impact is going to be different.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
I mean, you can have an earthquake anywhere and have
a lot of deaths, but in terms of European history,
to have a major European capital destroyed just so soundly
and so quickly, that's extraordinary. And so obviously it's going
to at very least very much impact the history of Portugal.
But it's interesting because Portugal is kind of at a
crossroads here, and the question is Portugal going to hang

(16:54):
on to its empire and in rolling into the twentieth century.
You know, I'm sure we have Portugue the listeners. I
don't anybody think I were saying Portuguese is irrelevant.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
But you can say that through the.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Twentieth century that Portugal you don't hear so much about it.
I mean, they had colonial wars that were very devastating
colonial wars after trying to hand to the colonial empire.
But I mean their role in the First World War
was fairly limited and it was all over empire, and
they remain completely neutral in the Second World War. And
you know, now I almost think them as kind of
a sleepy state, right, And the question is that is

(17:27):
that how it would have been, because that's not how
they would have been seen in the eighteenth century.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
They would have been seen as one of the great
global powers.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
Well, it's actually kind of interesting. I'm getting a little
bit different take on Portugal in seventeen fifty five, and
that is they're clearly an empire into klone, and they
were also an empire that was vast yet not particularly deep.
They did not have major colonies in India. They had

(17:57):
basically trade forts which were extraordinarily profitable. But by seventeen
fifty five, basically their Indian possessions are gone. And at
that point Mozambique and Angola are contributing somewhat to the Portuguese.

(18:19):
But at this point I think Portugal is really kind
of They've gotten to the point where their empire really
is based upon the fact that they still do have
possession of Brazil. Brazil and yeah, and at the time,
if they had retained.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Possession of Brazil, obviously it would be I mean, it
would be kind of like Denmark and Greenland, except what
if Greenland was actually producing stuff?

Speaker 3 (18:40):
I mean, if Portugal.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Had retained possession of Brazil. Then Brazil in terms of
population and gross domestic product knowledge sort of thing would
have dwarfed Portugal by now. So I mean, but I
mean it was a state that was modernizing, it was
a state that was industrializing, and you know, the brakes
were put on all of that, and all this huge
amount of money that came from Brazil with to rebuilding

(19:03):
as opposed to building.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, and I think it's the Portuguese history extremely extremely
fascinating in some ways, a little off the beaten path.
They are definitely a naval empire, but especially in the
early seventeen hundreds. What has happened is they're a nation

(19:26):
of two million people, and in seventeen oh six they
actually had to put the brakes on emigration to Brazil
because they were losing so much population to the gold
rushes in Brazil that this was kind of, in a way,
it was a perfect storm. They're already beginning to have

(19:47):
problems because the Dutch and the British have taken possession
of a lot of their most popular, the most profitable
portions of their empire. They you know, their their population
has never been particularly large to begin with. In the
grand scheme of things compared to Spain, Great Britain, any

(20:09):
of the other continental powers at this point. At the
same time, with the you know, with the raw amount
of gold that is coming in through Portugal. Yeah, they're
certainly a major player. So I don't want to I
don't want to minimize that they do player role and
that they were definitely seen as an important player on

(20:30):
the stage of European politics. At the same time, the
Portuguese army was never going to land and threaten the
existence of France, Spain, Prussia or Russia.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
You know, when France and Spain invaded Portugal. Uh, Portugal
won that fight. It was good at the help of
the British. But I mean during the Napoleonic Wars, they
were considered to be some of the best troops in Europe,
even though their numbers were small.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Although that was the Portuguese it was a crown into
up fleeing to Brazil during that time, didn't they That
was the But I mean, I think it is. It
would be probably simplistic to say that this earthquake, you know,
was the only part of ending the the uh Portuguese Empire.
I remember I was reading about a lot of what
you know was going on in the in the centuries
before this, because it really talked about as you know,

(21:19):
as Brad said, this was a small country. It just
didn't have it only had so much population, it only
had so much honestly financial support to support an enormous empire.
And how it really made itself as powerful as it
did was that it was first. They they were the
first too. They they were advanced, they had advanced ships,
they were the first to India, they were they were

(21:41):
on top of all of this stuff, and so that
kept them ahead. But then these these bigger empires with
more wealth, with more population, you know, they catch up
and Portugal was was struggling, and I you know that
I read a lot about how their their financial you know,
foundation was was not that strong, and that they were
struggling to support these wars, and especially you know after

(22:03):
the Iberian Union, where they get in the because Spain
was fighting with the English and the Dutch, they lose
a lot of their power in the Indian Ocean, and
that that was they held onto some stuff and some
important stuff there, but the dominance shifts to the Dutch
and then eventually to the English, and so the Portuguese had,

(22:24):
you know, they were important, and there's stuff that I
think that this had an impact, you know, within the decline,
but yeah, they certainly had. They were not exactly in
their golden era, their golden age of prosperity in seventeen
fifty five. But maybe that makes it in some ways
even more devastating that they're really they're not in a

(22:45):
place where they could absorb this. They were already kind
of teetering, and then you just wiping out the capital
like that was I mean, you see why so many
people were like, wow, this was an act of God
and it destroyed so much much of that of Lisbon.
I mean, there's very little of Lisbon pre seventeen fifty
five that still exists. It just knocked down everything. The

(23:07):
cultural loss is honestly difficult to state in terms of
the paintings, the statues and everything that we lost. That
the churches just gone. The church is just gone.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
But I mean, on the other hand, it gave to
a rise to quite a bit of art and literature
and the whole new kind of architecture and all sorts
of things that came out of it.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
But yeah, yeah, it's interesting because of that, right you
lose all this stuff, and there's amazing things that we
would have loved to see. But it's also true that,
you know, without this earthquake and some of that doesn't appear,
we don't get that new architecture, we don't get the
Enlightenment impact, which I think is one of the most
interesting pieces of this this episode and this topic is

(23:48):
talking about how it impacted thinkers of the time.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, that's I mean, it's something I just really have
to think about, is that it's this is almost a
natural disaster that had so many things that grew out
of it that I mean, it's almost like you would
would how much worse would the world be if we
hadn't developed seismology, if we hadn't you know, if this
hadn't moved the Enlightenment the way that it did.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
I'm sorry, Brad may need to interrupt there, Okay.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
The earthquake is quite honestly, it is a huge pivot
point in Portuguese history because the King of Portugal, essentially
due to the earthquake and after the earthquake, really takes
a step back from ruling the country and turns it
over to a very aggressive reformer who, following some of

(24:39):
the Enlightenment trends pivots from hereditary monarchy to enlightened despotism.
This is definitely a point in time where Portugal, which
at the time in some ways was seen as kind
of a backwater. And you know, again, not to minimize
the you know, not to minimize Lisbon as an important city,

(25:00):
but when you compare Vienna, London, Brandenburg, Berlin, Paris, yeah,
you know, uh, you know, Lisbon is definitely not quite
quite at that tier.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
They were behind it in modernizing and stuff like that.
That's that's very true.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Well, but they get even farther behind.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
I mean, that is an interesting question because Pombal is
an interesting guy. Uh, but the you know, the king
in some ways, Josepha was already essentially passing most of
the power to Pumbule as it was. So is it
that we is it Pumble or Joseph or was it
going to be Pumball anyway? Or is this a matter
of how much power Pumble has because you know, shortly thereafter,
what's he he he has his different way. He wipes

(25:40):
out a whole royal family of Portugal, just goes and
kills them all, claiming that they that they attempted to
assassinate the king. Maybe he doesn't have the authority to
do that, but I mean, that's that's an interesting question
because the real question is what is his role absent
the earthquake.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
It's certainly he was able to use the earthquake to
enhance himself and his royal favor. I mean, he becomes
he becomes the figure of this, you know, this era
in Portuguese history, and he does things like you know,
the the nobility didn't like him because he was taking
stuff from there, trying to trying to take away from
their power, and he pushed real hard on that. And

(26:16):
so you wonder, you know, apps absent this, would he
have the power to have done that, or with the
nobles or some other ministers or something like that have
been able to, you know, overthrow him. Certainly, there was
there was court intrigue and he I mean, he was
he had a he also he did, he was he
was fairly popular, but he did have a head a
reputation of you know, for for violence. There was a

(26:37):
there was a riot in Porto when they when they
put down the riot, they had the the the leaders
of the riot hung outside the gates, and he left
them there so long that eventually, like the the priests
in the city had to go get special special permission
from the king to take the bodies down. He ruled
with an iron fist. There. The enlightened despotism is a

(26:59):
good is a good way of.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Putting Actually, he kind of when he loses power when
the king dies, when Joseph dies, because Joseph's daughter hates
the guy.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
But yeah, I mean that the earthquake broke the kid.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
And he wouldn't he wouldn't go inside a building again.
And so it seems like he apparently just completely pulled
back from any idea that he was going to rule
and and gave.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
All the power and so would have had power.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
How much power would have you had if it wasn't
for uh, if it wasn't for the earthquake, that's a
very good question.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
I do believe Thumble would not have had nearly the
power if you know, in an alternate timeline, uh, the
earthquake does not occur.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (27:39):
And part of that is based on the fact that
he is low born, it's true, and and enlightened despotism, uh,
you know, despite the despotic part of enlightened despotism really
does begin to say, okay, let's break away with some
of the older traditional very very much more royal versus commoner,
nobility versus is versus peasant versus commoner, and fumbled had

(28:05):
definitely he had to, he had to take a claim
to his authority. I think he would have had a
much rougher time had he not been the Johnny on
the spot who really takes hold of the relief efforts.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, the relief efforts specifically, or what really gives him
this rise to powers that there was a vacuum, there
was chaos, they needed someone, and he was there. Although
he I mean, there's there's a good point that he
seems to have survived rather miraculously. It would have been
very easy for him to have died in this earthquake.
And if you're talking about a different history, if he

(28:40):
was simply dead from the earthquake, and that certainly would
have impacted don't as somebody might have come in, but
you might have had a much less effective.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
Yeah, well, surrounding the city of Lisbon and preventing refugees
from fleeing to make sure that the workforce is still
there for the recovery effort. Again, that's on the despotic
side of the enlightened despotism. But I think it can
make a pretty fair argument that this was incredibly important

(29:11):
at the time, and a weaker man a, you know,
a less engaged noble might not have had the wherewithal
or the idea that hey, we're going to do this
and we are going to make this happen.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
He acted so quickly, you know, that's that I think
a lot of people would have still just been being like,
we need we need time to even just organize and
figure out what's going on.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
Yeah, well one in four of its citizens have just died.
So two hundred thousand is now one hundred and fifty thousand,
you know, depending on the actual death count and where
the estimates come.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Seriously, just absolutely devastating. It's hard to It's that's why
it's incredible to have someone who was ready to fix it,
you know, to just seize the reins like he did.
And so, I mean he was an important figure. He
wasn't perfect. I saw quite a few criticisms of some
of his modernizations and reforms as well. He does a
lot of reforming in Brazil. Of course, I think there's

(30:11):
probably a lot of conversation over whether that was all
positive and in what ways it was positive. But I
saw some criticisms specifically, you know, he weakens the power
of the church, kicks out the Jesuits. He ended up
they that people will say that he didn't support you know,
what he came into replace with education wasn't strong enough,
and so like the literacy rates fell in Portugal after

(30:32):
he kicked the Jesuits out, and he wasn't as successful
in all of his modernization with economically, So I mean,
it's it's one of those things that he was. He
was very important. It impacted all of his his everything
that he did had an impact on how Portugal was
going to move forward. Were they all positive impacts? Maybe not.
It certainly would have looked very different, and.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Many of the reforms regarding the earthquake specifically became a model.
And I mean it wasn't it wasn't just that was
impacted by what they were doing.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
I think that Portugal has to count itself lucky in that,
over a span of about five hundred years they had
a couple of true geniuses. The early the formation of
the Dutch Naval Empire is very much state sponsored and

(31:22):
it is very much the responsibility of Basco de Gama
Diez and there's probably some others who I'm just not
recalling off the top of my head, but they really
approached it pretty scientifically, and the state of the Crown
was very interested in keeping that information secret and to

(31:46):
try to exploit that for as long as they could.
And you know, the fact that they had dominance in
India and Africa for the period of time that they
did shows that those efforts were very effective. And for
all of my Ormond friends, I must point out that
this is the period in time in which Portugal finally

(32:08):
approaches port wine with the care and love that it deserves,
so that the equality of port is really established at
this time.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
So and they were one of the earliest states to
do so, to to you know, make sure that we
and gosh, now now you know that's that's how you
get the if it's not from the Champagne region of France,
it's just sparkling wine.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, and so you know, another another piece of the puzzle,
of course, is fortunately Lisbon did have the Brazilian Empire
to fall back on, because there was never really any
indication that there was a shortage of money for the brief.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
But I mean they realizing in the way that they
were headed towards, I mean that money went to instead rebuilding.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
But yeah, I mean they.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Other European powers might not have been able to recover
in the way that they did because they didn't have.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
That that coming in. But it's kind of like the
you know, the British in the Second World War.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
They finally just they finally just cashed out all that
they had gotten from the Empire in order to survive,
and they were exhausting.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
The Empire was exhausted after that.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, well it seems like you know, they folk they
I mean, they had been focusing on Brazil all, you know,
before the earthquake, but between after, with the reforms and
stuff like that, they had i mean almost essentially given
up on the rest of the Empire. Brazil was the
one bringing in the money and they needed that, and
I mean that kind of leads to some of the
like in seventeen eighty seven, there's there's a revolt in Goa,

(33:35):
and some of that has to do with the fact
that the Portuguese were not as as on top of
their colonial managerial responsibilities as they could have been they
don't lose Goa, but they do lose their Moroccan territories
in seventeen sixty nine.

Speaker 4 (33:50):
Yeah, I think the next, you know, the next interesting
branch that we can take in our alternate timeline is
what if the earthquake doesn't occur in Portugal plays a
more major role in the Seven Years War? Oh excuse me, am,
I referring to the French and Indian War with the

(34:12):
wrong historical terminology really starts getting into the major conflict
that becomes europe wide at roughly this time. So the
Alliance now it's you know, one of the possible timelines.
Would you know, what if Portugal decides that while the

(34:33):
British and the Dutch are fighting on the continent, that
they're going to sneak one in and say, go back
and occupy the Gold coast of Africa. Do they have
the strength to do that? That's an interesting question. With
a population of only two million, I think it's a

(34:54):
it's a rough case to make, and it would have
been very opportunistic and it would have been very much Again,
you know, several hundred years of Portuguese British friendship.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
And one of kind of many scenarios to say that
if the you know, if it hadn't taken this hit,
you know, would Portugal have been able to make a
bigger difference again for a European power. I mean, it's
a very small country though they I mean, I mean,
the whole history of Portugal is interesting, but what they
held their own against it so many times, it's really
kind of amazing that Portugal is still a country. For

(35:25):
a very long time, it looked like Portugal was always
going to be absorbed by Spain. It was absorbed by
Spain and fought it for its independence again, So I
mean that it's kind of I mean, it's also hard
to say, you know, out of the out of fifty
thousand people that were killed, maybe there was a da
Vinci in there. I mean, we you know, we don't
know exactly what everybody killed would have been. But that
rolls it's not just into the into the Seven Years
War and in the Warspanic Succession and all the things

(35:46):
that are happening in Europe at the time, because I
mean that also rolls into the up into the twentieth century.
Is that Portugal is kind of an entity during some
of the some of the most powerful events of Europe
and and how much of that can tie back to
what happened here.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Of the many places that Palmball was changing things, one
of the things he neglected was was the armed forces.
And ultimately, in the very little bits that you know,
Portugal was involved in the Seven Years War, which is
just kind of toward the end, they end up faring
very well. But there's a reason why, you know, Portugal
didn't have a military to go send to assist and

(36:22):
there are times where that really could have altered the
trajectory of that war. If Portugal had been in a
more powerful position, maybe you know, maybe Spain would have
gotten involved earlier. I mean, that's it's interesting to see
how that would They had reasons to fight, but they
had kind of worked out their differences Spain and Portugal,
you know, in the in the treaty in seventeen fifty

(36:42):
does if Portugal does you know, we already saw in
this little, this little part that Portugal was able to
defeat the Spanish with the British help. But would that
have looked differently if Portugal had had a competent and
powerful military force. I mean, maybe that would have been
maybe that would have meant that Spain was defeated even
more badly, and Portugal was never in a position really
to read, you know, invade Spain, but maybe they would

(37:04):
have been, and that that certainly could have could have
dramatically altered.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
So yeah, the fact that Portugals they had able to
hang on in the Seven Years' War versus the Spanish
invasion with only eight thousand, eight thousand troops sent in
relief by Great Britain indicates that in Portugal is very
heavy country and invading it is, Yeah, it's going to
be a chore.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
I might say a lot about the quality of the
Spanish troops as well, you know, as opposed to the
but that that, yeah, you know, it's different to defend
your country than it would have been to attack. And
so they don't. I don't think the Portuguese they were
considered an ally of the British, but I don't. I
don't think they ever, you know, sent significant forces anywhere.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
In that power.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Now.

Speaker 4 (37:46):
I think the main thing they did was they served
as a convenient counterbalance to Spain on the Iberian Peninsula
in a way that Spain perhaps was not able to
commit as many resources uh into their attempts to take
back some of the some of their some of their possessions,

(38:07):
basically the Spanish Netherlands.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
Yeah, the idea of Portugal suddenly bursting bursting out in
a lightning war and conquering Spain in southern France is yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
That that that that that.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
That's in the realm of fiction.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
That probably it would be in the realm of fiction
even without the earthquake, but it's it's even more after
the earthquake because they just don't, you know, they don't
have the the resources to to and they didn't have
the leadership that was that was interested in, you know,
really modernizing the military. And so maybe if you know,
if Lisbon, you don't have to rebuild your whole capital,

(38:41):
you can you can put some more resources into that.
It is a little hard to imagine that they're able
to put the kind of resources that you would need
to really uh you know, lightning war Spain. But but
certainly it could have. It could have changed the equation somewhat.
Maybe maybe Spain's less interested Invadingual if they're not weakened

(39:01):
by the earthquake.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Another interesting opportunity might have been, what if Spain had
decided to be a little more aggressive and maybe Spain
makes a move on Brazil. They break the agreement and
they go for the western the western side of the
dividing line, and make a play for again, make a

(39:24):
play for Brazil. Which the amount of gold coming out
of Brazil at that point cannot be underestimated. One of
the sources I was reading said that eighty percent of
the gold in Europe had come from Brazil. That's great,
So yeah, this is not yeah, yeah, this this is
not a trickle of gold that is you know, serving

(39:45):
as pocket change for it.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
It's it's uh. You know, Portugal obviously had every reason
to defend Brazil with everything they had because of that,
because you know, if if after the after the earthquake,
they lose Brazil, I mean that's Portugal isn't a real
bad Bazil, and so they're able to hold onto it
for what like another seventy seventy years or so, at
eighteen twenties is when when Brazil gains independence. It would

(40:09):
be different. And it's interesting. You know, there was there
was some fighting in the between Portugal and Spain, you know,
after they invade Portugal there, but it was prairly limited
in South America, and you wonder what might happen if
the Spanish were more interested in pursuing that.

Speaker 4 (40:23):
Yeah, mozam Beacon Angola is it's not enough to make
up for the potential loss of Brazil.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, they just had to hold it. And I don't
know what that that's it's amazing to think that that
how the ways that could have reshaped the modern world.
Difficult maybe for us to fully, you know, fully imagine
what that world would look like, but that certainly it
mattered that Portugal held on to that when at that time,
and if Spain was able to take it. It would have
mattered that Spain was able to take it. That was,

(40:51):
you know, especially because Spain also was struggling with their
empire by that time.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
And I mean, anybody, any major power taking Brazil would
it could have changed everything.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
So yeah, so this had a.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Huge impact on the Enlightenment, not just in terms of
creation of science. And actually this earthquake was really interesting
because it was larger than Portugal was in a lot
of places.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
Uh there, and.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Mumble did this extraordinary thing where he went and tracked
down when and exactly when what happened, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
In a way that created the science of seismology.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
But I mean the fact that I mean, you know,
the belief always before had been the natural disasters were
you know, God punishing a country, and there were some
of that, but it was difficult for people to haveath
them because the people that were killed were the faithful.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
They were in church.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
When the church collapsed, they had so few priests left
that they didn't have enough people to say rights over
the dead. And that dramatically in change changed belief in
faith in Europe, which I mean, I think it still
impacts Europe today. So I mean, if if this earthquake
had not occurred, does does the faith stay stronger in
Portugal for longer? But but as Europe more religious place

(42:01):
than it is today.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
And I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything that
would really attempt to you know, like estimate solid data
on that. But the idea that we we went from
a place where you know, essentially you could any any
kind of natural disaster could be played off as as
played off it could be could be described as as
as an act of God. And the fact that they
were able to see that and say there's there's there's

(42:23):
there seems to be an issue with our you know,
with our ideology here, and that they were able to,
I mean, came at the right time during the Enlightenment
when people were looking for explanations. And it also I
mean it's true that it really allowed them to have
these explanations be something that people actually cared about. I
don't think it's overstating it to say that that was
vital in this, that this was an important piece of

(42:46):
how how this idea of the Enlightenment and science and
how we approach natural masters was formulated.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Well, totally see very much.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
So, yeah, I can see where there might be an
argument and you know, the potential that the Catholic Church
might have held on in the way that it did
for just a little bit longer in Portugal, because if
Portugal remains firmly in the French, Spanish Catholic Catholic sphere,

(43:20):
perhaps there's even you know, even there's a final gasp
of Protestant versus Catholic that begins to effect that long
standing friendship between Portugal and Britain. And again that I
think that maybe it is a testament to the fact
that the pivot was made to the enlightened enlightened despotism,

(43:43):
and that falls a little more on the enlightened side.
And yeah, it cannot be stayed. It cannot be overstated
just how important convols gathering of data what actually happened
with the earthquake really send the signal that, yeah, you
don't need to go to church to understand this or earthquake.
We need to understand that it happens because of certain things,

(44:05):
and we know in the future that if we have
a major earthquake, that this is probably what it's going
to look like, and you know, at least then you
can start thinking about.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
It changed architecture as they began to create architecture that
was earthquake resistant. It changed urban planning because here you
have this massive city that you could actually kind of
take again from scratch. It created kind of a world
idea of how you assist people at natural disasters, as
well as starting seismology and the ability to try to

(44:35):
understand where earthquakes might occur.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
But you know, the question, which is always a question.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Of history, would that have happened anyway just as a
result of some other disaster or was that something? But
I mean the fact that it hit a major power
a major capital was one of the most vibrant cities
in Europe and considered that at the time, and that
that allowed to have even more impact in a way
that actually probably ripples through through history.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah. Well, because if it had happened somewhere else, and
if it had happened at another time, how would have
been different. I mean, that's the that's maybe one of
the big questions of the counterfactual here, right, It's that
this is how it happened, But what was important about
it happening the way it did. It's not that earthquakes
were totally unknown in Europe, but of this magnitude they
essentially were. You know, in the video you mentioned it

(45:24):
was they think it was one of the most powerful
earthquake to hit Portugal in ten thousand years. I mean,
there was no cultural memory of this, of this level
of destruction, and you can see some of that. They
run to the ports, and that was a sensible thing
to do when all the buildings were falling down until
you get hit by the tsunami and they just simply
had no idea that that was going to happen. And

(45:46):
there are maybe places where you know, that's more common
where they were more prepared for that, you know, not
to go run to the beaches or into the river
when that kind of stuff happens. But it was also
I mean, gosh, you were so right about how important
it was that we figure it out. This is how
the earthquake happens, and this is how we can respond
to it.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah, I mean, and the earthquake hits support royal And
it's easy to say, you know, they're pirates, we don't care.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, But I mean here, I mean.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
First of all, I mean, that's belief was that faith
is what protected you from natural disasters.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
You didn't have a more faithful place than Lisbon and
you know the.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
So I mean, it does it changed that, But it's
also I mean, this is this is a place where
people can't just ignore a natural disaster and say, oh,
those are just barbarians or centers.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, and that's and that and then the Enlightenment allowed
essentially had given had provided the tools for what you
do with that information, and you don't just say, oh,
we should pray harder. Without the Enlightenment, would he have,
you know, tried to collect all this information. And it's
amazing how vital that is. Historians because so many of
those events we don't we rely on essentially iweness testimony,

(46:51):
and no one thought to go try to collect all
of that together.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
Yeah, there's another, Uh, there's another impact that the earthquake.
It's kind of tangential related. The earthquake results in the
destruction of a lot of the history of the development
of the Dutch Naval Empire in its early days because
all of that information is more or less kept in
the capital. It probably wasn't under lock and key as

(47:17):
it was originally because it was literally the you know,
the secret the secret sauce to the empire. You know,
certainly huge, huge numbers of records that would have given
us a lot of insight into what was going on
in Africa and India at the time was lost. And
so I would say that I'm not going to put
it on the same scale to say, the loss of

(47:38):
the library at Alexandria. But it also is not the
equivalent of you know, your local library closing. This is,
you know, this was a major treasure trove of historical
artifact and documentation was what was lost during the earthquake, and.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
It's impossible to even know what it contained. We don't
even have a real idea of what was lost here,
but it.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Was you have to really hate the Romans.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
I don't even know how else how else to put it.
That seems understate statements, But.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean again, we're talking to event. We're
one in four people of a major European city die,
and cannot be understated that this is a major event.
In some ways, though it kind of does get lost
in history. And that's why I'm glad that Lance made
this episode because so much more literally a year later,

(48:36):
the Seven Years War is going hot and heavy, and
so these major events that are happening at the periphery
outside of the central players, if you will, of you know, Europe,
Eurasia and the British Isles. You know it just in
a way it feels like it got lost in the shuffle.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
And this is an event that really was I mean,
as as much as the Portuguese Empire was in decline
you are talking, you know, in seventeen fifty five, Portugal
was a player on that scene, and by the time
the war starting in seventeen fifty six, Portugal is essentially
not Who knows what Portugal might have done in that
war except that they had this event happen and then
the rest of Europe moved on.

Speaker 4 (49:16):
But Portugal couldn't. Yeah, now, just because we have to
work in a Napoleonic aspect to this somehow without the
you know, without the earthquake, does the Portuguese British relationship,
and you can argue it's a very close relationship and
very long standing, does it suffer in any way, shape

(49:37):
or form. I can't think of a way.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
That parently English see this earthquake as a huge disaster
and that's some mens of friendship between them, because the
English do so much to help from the recovery, so
it could have impacted how close that relationship is.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
I think that's fair to say. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
And the fact that the British send eight thousand troops
later in the Seven Years War is an indication that
they were is that if we lose Portugal it is
a it will be a blow to the cause. And
this has repercussions only basically forty five to fifty years
later when Napoleon comes into Spain. Another interesting question is

(50:17):
if Spain looks at Portugal, not affected by the earthquake
and says, hey, easy pickings, let's invade it. Do they
not learn the lessons of a successful guerrilla warfare against
a numerically, technologically and militarily more efficient system. When Napoleon
comes into the Iberian peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars, the

(50:39):
ripples a little further, a little harder to trace back.
But you know, it is definitely a possibility.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
He's interesting also as a counterfactual, is what if this
earthquake had hit another capital instead, What if it was
London or Madrid.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I thought about that. You know, what if this had hit.

Speaker 4 (50:57):
What if it hits Berlin at the height of the
Seven Years War or just before the civil the Seven
Years War begins.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
You know, we had talked about, you know, where this
earthquake hits matters, And that's true, and not just because
you know, if it hits out in the middle of
the ocean or something like that, maybe there's less impact,
but because if you just move it, you know, a
few hundred miles east to hit Madrid, or north to
hit London or Paris or something like that. I mean
that certainly, if an if another one of these countries,

(51:25):
even if they had like a better financial base than
Portugal did at the time, to try to rebuild their capital.
I can't imagine that any country would have been in
good shape if their capital just gets you know, knocked down,
like throwing a mountain sized bowling ball at you. It
just knocked down a whole city like that. I mean,
that's not any one of those countries would have meant

(51:46):
that seven years war was different. And if that's different,
you know the way that that impacts up to the
up to the you know, if we knock Paris down
in seventeen fifty five, is there a Napoleonic war the
way that we saw it, simply because the all to
rations that would have had to happen in France from
such a disaster, Yeah, would they have had their own

(52:07):
palmball or would they would you know, would they have
struggled in disaster for years? Would it have killed you know?
Would they have been lucky? The way that the I mean,
part of the reason that the Portuguese king survives is
because he wasn't really that interested in being a part
of the capital life and stuff like that. He's he's
more interested in hunting, so he's outside of the city
when the when when all the buildings fall down, and
that's that might not have been true in London or Paris.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, well, I mean it very came very close to
killing the King of Portugal, so I it certainly Yeah,
if it killed a monarchy at this time, that could
that could radically impact Europe at the time.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
Yes, I think that the absolute worst case scenario for
the anti Spanish French alliance would be at Austria. Of course,
would be if London had been hit, because London is
preoccupied rebuilding from this major disaster. Now, you know, at

(53:03):
that point, is Frederick the Second smart enough to say, well,
the guy who's probably gonna back me might be a
little distracted at this point, so perhaps uh challenge you know,
openly challenging Austria isn't a real good idea at this point,
you know, is Frederick? Is Frederick the Great great enough

(53:23):
that he understands that in an alternate timeline.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Because and that's I mean, that's because that's might be
what it takes is that if England is unable to
and even if you know, even if much of their
military is you know, they're they're say, their fleet isn't
totally sunk because London is knocked down, but it's awfully
hard to manage a conflict when your capital is is
just wiped out like that and you can't manage her.
All the recovery you'd have to do to try to

(53:47):
manage your whole empire is is crazy. And in some ways,
you know, because Lisbon was kind of more on the decline,
you know, maybe that was that was advantageous to them,
Whereas if that happens in England when you're when you know,
when you're truly on kind of the rise, that's not
as easy for them.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
The rural England playing in the next century is so important.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, but you could also see a world where if
that hits a say Vienna or something like that, that
that gives someone an opportunity where they're like, okay, now we.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
Attack Prussia, I would predict would immediately, well, yeah, we're
going if.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
An earthquake is hitting Vienna, likely Prussia is devastated by
the same earthquake though, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
That's also earthquake in the middle of that's certainly though,
I mean not you know, knocking down a capital like
that would be dramatic, and it would have any any
one of those capitals would.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
In some ways, maybe this capital was the one that
had the least impact on history.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, certainly had a huge impact on Portugal.

Speaker 4 (54:56):
But on the rest of your what if it hits
you know, what if it hits the capital of Denmark
at this point there, you know, that's the other side
where you know, Austria or France and Spain start thinking, okay,
this might be the time. Yeah, that location of the
earthquake is is it does end up being extremely important.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
This was a remarkable earthquake, and it's i mean still stands,
as you know, among the most powerful, and certainly in
terms of destruction. I mean, it's it's up there. There's
there's not a lot of earthquakes. You know, earthquakes happen
seemingly capriciously. Now that we have our understanding of seismology,
we at least have some understanding of where and where

(55:37):
they happen, less maybe of when than we would like,
you know, a nine point zero magnitude earthquake almost anywhere
in history.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, there was, there was recently an earthquake, you know Lisbon, right,
did I read that? But I don't think anything this happens.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
I was seeing something that was suggesting that like, oh,
there's not like a lot of reason to be afraid
of of an earthquake like that. But I mean I
think we I think earthquakes are still something we are
not great at predicting.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Yeah, all around us, we're still learning things on natural disasters.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Yeah, yeah, right, And I mean that's why we spend
all this time trying to figure out when something like,
you know, a super eruption from Yellowstone might happen or
something like that. The fear there is is that we
don't know when it might happen. Now, I was looking
for a way that we bring in Bigfoot on this one.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
There there seems to be no Portuguese version of Bigfoot.
That's truly a disappointment.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
You just have to imagine. It seems like this was
this was a great tragedy, but it wasn't great enough
a tragedy to have the Bigfoot Kingdom in the New
World be like, let's send some let's send some Bigfoot
laborers to help them clear up Lisbon. That was not
that was not in the cards.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
There is a version of Bigfoot that's in at least Iberia,
it just doesn't have to be in Portugal. But he's
more of a spirit. It sounded like more like a
like a spirit of good luck that will pop up
your garden.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
But yeah, I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Uh, you know, of course this could have an earthquake
the size could have woke up the lost Ness monster
or Godzilla or something. You know, imagine if this earthquake,
because what was that movie where the earthquake and then
the bugs came out and ate everybody remember them on
the Black Bug. So there's there's obviously the potential that
an earthquake this size could have unleashed some sort of

(57:22):
cryptid which could have because if this, if this had
created you know, Kaijohn off the coast of Portugal right
before the Seven Years War, then everybody would be working
together or you know, that's maybe digestive, but.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
That's that's the most interesting history is that this was
maybe the earthquake was was that was? That was the Bigfoot,
the advanced bigfoot species in the Submarines, stopping the Giju
from breaking through like Pacific rim.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Will.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
This would be so mighty as to the Bigfoot.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
At this point we are imagining a rather wild scenario
that's very little to do.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Maybe that the Portuguese Bigfoots were living in caves and
the earthquake either you would have woken them up or
sealed them in the caves. I mean there must, because
there's got to be some reason. Well, Portugal, everywhere you go,
whatever we do, you always say, is there a big place?
Is there is there big there always is, There's always
a big foot, the type of a Portuguese bigfoot. They say, no, no,
there's there's nothing, nothing in it.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
Maybe this earthquake was in fact an extinction event.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Maybe this is why, maybe the earthquake of seventeen seventy
five is why there is no Portuguese bigfoot.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
That's that's the biggest impact on history, is that if
it didn't happen, we would know about Portuguese bigfoot.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
Yes, that the one piece of evidence that would be
proof was in Portugal, and alas it was destroyed in.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
This in the library in the basement in Lisbon.

Speaker 5 (58:59):
The onetograph that's not fuzzy.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
He was lost in the in the library with all
the fires and between everything, among the cultural artifacts we lost.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
Well, I certainly, I certainly hope that, I certainly hope
that the audience get as much of a chuckle out
of this as we do when we come up with
these fantastical.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
These are almost my favorite parts.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Anybody it's a regular listener knows that we have to
work in big Foot somehow. So yeah, I mean who
knows what was lost? Like like Brett, we don't know
what was lost in that in that library, and it
could it could be very important to the bfro o yees.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:38):
Now I also noticed that the last couple of episodes
we have taken a break from space aliens. So I mean,
is there a is there an alien? Is there a
prehistoric alien site that somehow is affected by the earthquake?

Speaker 2 (59:53):
You can't, you can't discount the possibility that aliens are
causing the earthquake.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Yeah, and a crashing spaceship.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Portugal through their library would be the one that was
going to develop the technology that would help us in
the twenty first century to defend ourselves.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
From the aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
And so the aliens went back in time and caused
an earthquake. And so this is actually the end of
time will come because of the Portuguese earthquake at seventeen
fifty five.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
You can't discount it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
You can't. You can't prove that didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
I dare you to try.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
These facts cannot be anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
We didn't mention because candid Voltaire Candy was largely based
on this, and because that was such a critical piece
in the period of rationalization, et cetera. That again, I mean,
how different might Europe have been? How important really was
this particular earthquake to the age of Enlightenment.

Speaker 5 (01:00:53):
Which really had a lot to do with social and
technological development and really has a lot to do with
the way that Europe is to And was this truly
the centerpiece? Would the Enlightenment have died or at least,
you know, monarchy have overwhelmed the Enlightenment if it worked
for the Portuguese earthquake of seventeen fifty five. I mean,
it's not an absurd argument to say. I mean, it's

(01:01:15):
easier to argue that killing one hundred and fifty thousand
people on Palm Sunday is a lot more important to
history than you know, one great man. You know, if
there hadn't been Napoleon, would there have been somebody else,
because there were other French generals. But if there hadn't
been if there'd been an extra.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
One hundred and fifty thousand people who didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Die on that day in that place, then could that
and so it's clearly it impacted the trajectory of Portugal,
but I mean it's not unfair to say it might
have really impacted the trajectory of the entire Western world,
and in that then it impacts all the empires, so
it becomes a worldwide impact.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Well, and that's true of Western thought. It's a more
difficult history for us to trace. It's mostly just because
you know, you can't just named rattle off events and
stuff like that. But when you talk about things like rationalism,
I mean, those are foundational for so much of how
the modern world thinks about the world, and it's it's

(01:02:12):
difficult to even imagine what, you know, if it had
happened in a different place, or if you know, maybe
maybe oldhair doesn't write that. And you're right, if we
stop getting this kind of rationalization, and that impacts how
we develop from then on and how people think about things.
That's that might have been a much more profound impact

(01:02:32):
than any of the other things we've talked about, and
that's it's difficult to know exactly how how that would
have played out. But we might not be having this
conversation because we would have just simply thought about history differently.
Than we do today.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Yeah, I mean, okay, Candid might be the biggest single
impact of this, of the entire event, is if we
didn't get Candid.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the History
Guy podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode of counterfactual history,
and if you did, you can find lots more history
if you follow the History Guy on YouTube. You can
also find us at the historygui dot com, Facebook, Patreon,
and locals. If you want to hear more counterfactuals, stay tuned.
We release podcasts every two weeks.
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