Research Catalog

Pombal : paradox of the Enlightenment

Title: Pombal : paradox of the Enlightenment / Kenneth Maxwell.
Author: Maxwell, Kenneth, 1941-
Publication: Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	DP641 .M39 1995	Off-site

Description

xvii, 200 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 26 cm

Summary

This is the first major study in English for over half a century of one of Portugal's most important historical figures, Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Melo, marques de Pombal (1699-1782), who is best known today as the key figure in the reconstruction of Lisbon after the devastating earthquake of 1755.
Pombal's achievements, however, went far beyond the reconstruction of the capital. An unusually single-minded and ruthless first minister, he was also one of the eighteenth century's most successful "enlightened despots": for example, he reformed the Portuguese system of education, expelled the Jesuits from Portugal, thereby beginning the process leading to their suppression by the pope in 1773, and mounted a formidable challenge to British commercial hegemony in Portugal.
Recent renewed interest in the theory of enlightened absolutism has tended to ignore developments in the Iberian peninsula. This book is therefore essential to a full understanding of the complexities and paradoxes of enlightened rulership in a southern European context.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

ISBN

0521450446

LCCN

94010650

OCLC

ocm30154483

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries