History of Lisbon

Lisbon has long enjoyed the commercial advantages of its proximity to southern and extreme western Europe, as well as to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, and today its waterfront is lined with miles of docks, wharfs, and drydock facilities that accommodate the largest oil tankers.

Lisbon flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries as the centre of a vast empire during the period of the Portuguese discoveries, This was a time of intensive maritime exploration, when the Kingdom of Portugal accumulated great wealth and power through its colonisation of Asia, South America, Africa and the Atlantic islands.

[12][13] The Indo-European Celts entered the Iberian peninsula in the first millennium BC and gradually spread west to the Atlantic,[14] intermarrying with the native Pre-Indo-European population, and thus giving rise to Celtic-speaking local tribes such as the Cempsi and Sefes[15] or Ophis ("People of the Serpents").

It is possible that the Phocaean Greeks at one time also had a trading station at the mouth of the Tagus,[38][39] but were eventually driven out as the Phoenician colony of Carthage increasingly dominated maritime commerce in the western Mediterranean and expanded its naval power,[40] with control of localised mercantile relations with Olissipo passing to that city.

Al-Us̲h̲būna was renovated and rebuilt in the customary pattern of the Middle Eastern city:[82] high walls (muralhas) surrounding the main buildings, which were a large mosque, a castle at the top of the hill (which in modified form became the Castelo de São Jorge), a medina or urban centre, and an alcácer, or fortress-palace for the governor.

His general, Zir ibn Abi Bakr, Yusuf's nephew, forced Lisbon to surrender in 1111 after several unsuccessful attempts, and was later stopped in the region of Tomar by Gualdim Pais, Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templar of Portugal.

They exchanged Portuguese olive oil, salt, wine, cork, honey and wax as well as wool and fine linen textiles, tin, iron, dyes, amber, guns, furs and artisanal works of the north for the spices, silks and herbal remedies of the Mediterranean countries, in addition to the gold, ivory, rice, alum, almonds and sugar bought from the Arabs and Moors.

[118] An indirect effect of this economic dynamism was that Lisbon's trade contributed to the ruin of the south German merchants, who engaged in the same commerce by using a more costly land route between the ports of Italy and those of the Netherlands and the Hansa[119] that was only viable when Muslim pirates and their ships controlled southern Spain and the Strait of Gibraltar.

These merchants brought new cartographic and navigational techniques to Portugal, as well as an understanding of financial and banking practices and of the mercantilism system, not to mention the knowledge gained through their contacts with Byzantine and Muslim middlemen of the origins of imported Asian luxury goods such as silks and spices.

It was to serve their needs that business professionals organised in the city: bankers to raise capital and coordinate the financial risks; lawyers to protect the rights of citizens and handle their legal cases; naval architects and marine engineers to build boats, and scientists to design their navigational instruments.

The aftermath of these disasters, in Lisbon as well as in the rest of Europe, led to a series of religious, social, and economic upheavals, destroying the vibrant European civilization of the Middle Ages and the spirit of universal Christianity symbolised by the soaring Gothic architecture of its cathedrals.

Ceuta on the north African coast was captured by the Portuguese in 1415,[147] giving Lisbon's merchants a base from which to attack Saracen pirates and better local control of the Mediterranean trade that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, as well as the importation of Moroccan wheat at the best prices.

With his profits from the African trade, Gomes assisted Afonso in the conquests of Asilah, Alcácer Ceguer, and Tangier in Morocco, where he was knighted Meanwhile, there were new attempts by the remaining feudal nobles of northern Portugal to retake control of the kingdom, frustrated as they were by the growing prosperity of Lisbon's merchants in contrast to their own loss of income.

The war between the Ottoman Empire and Venice resulted in greatly increased prices for black pepper, other spices, and silks brought by the Venetians to Italy from the Ottoman-controlled Egypt, which received Arabian boats sailing from India at its ports on the Red Sea (and thence to Lisbon and the rest of Europe).

[200] Other works were begun to defend against pirate raids from the north, with new city walls and fortifications built according to military engineering principles of the time: these included the Torre do Bugio on an island in the middle of the Mar del Plata; and others in Cascais, Setúbal and on the south bank of the Tagus.

[208] Da Gama's achievement completed the exploratory efforts inaugurated by Henry the Navigator, and opened an oceanic route for the profitable spice trade into Europe[209] that bypassed the Middle East, greatly enriching the city's merchants as well as the royal treasury.

[273] As part of the reconstruction of downtown Lisbon, a new naval arsenal was erected by order of Pombal[274] at the same site on the banks of the Tagus, west of the royal palace, where many of the ships of the Portuguese age of exploration were built, among them the naus and galleons that had opened the trade route to India.

The 1st Marquis of Pombal, who had been born into the lower-ranking nobility, became effectively prime minister to Joseph I,[277] after brief careers in the Portuguese army and the diplomatic service[278] He famously responded to the king's query regarding what he should do about the devastation caused by the earthquake: "Bury the dead.

The critical architectural innovation designed for this purpose consisted of a wooden skeleton called the gaiola pombalina (Pombal Cage), a flexible rectangular frame with diagonal braces[283] enabling structures to withstand the overload and stress of an earthquake without coming apart.

[295] This led to a series of conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, culminating with the torture and public execution in 1759 of members of the Távora family[296][297] and its closest relatives, who were implicated in a plot to assassinate the king, dispatch Pombal and put the conservative Duke of Aveiro on the throne.

[299] By the 1770s Pombal had effectively neutralised the Inquisition,[300][301] consequently the new Christians, still the majority of the educated and liberal middle class of the city and the country, were freed from their legal restrictions and finally allowed access to the high government positions previously the exclusive monopoly of the 'pureblood' aristocracy.

[324] The prince regent of Portugal, later King John VI, who had formally governed the country on behalf of Maria I since 1799, took his fleet and transferred the Portuguese Court to Brazil with a British Royal Navy escort just before Napoleonic forces invaded Lisbon on 30 November 1807.

[346] A conspiracy against John and the Regency Council, organised by General Gomes Freire de Andrade, leader of the Portuguese partisans of France (Partido Francês), was discovered at Lisbon in May 1817; on the orders of Marshal Beresford, the principals were promptly arrested and tried.

However, it did present some liberal reforms, such as restoration of freedom of the press, mandatory education, abolishment of the slave trade in the African colonies, extinction of the religious orders and confiscation of their convents,[346] as well as the expropriation of many other properties of the Catholic Church, which had supported the Miguelists.

[415] He was still in office when the king of Portugal, Carlos I, and his son and heir to the throne, Luis Filipe, were killed in the Terreiro do Paço on 1 February 1908 by assassins[416] sympathetic to republican interests and aided by elements within the Portuguese Carbonária, disenchanted politicians and anti-monarchists.

[429] As the city's population grew during this period, it continued to expand northward into the broad expanse above Pombal Square and Parque Eduardo VII known as “Avenidas Novas",[430][431] which became the heart of the fashionable part of Lisbon, where the nouveau riche upper middle class built its grand new residences.

The First Republic ended in 1926,[427] well into the 20th century, when the anti-democratic conservative right (still led for the most part by the descendants of the old nobility in northern Portugal and the Catholic Church) finally took power after two attempts in 1925, leading eventually to the development of a new ideology and authoritarian government under the leadership of António de Oliveira Salazar.

The double centenary, celebrated with the Exposição do Mundo Português (Portuguese World Exhibition) held between June and December 1940, was the first major cultural event of the Estado Novo (New State) dictatorship and marked the high-point of its "nationalist-imperialist" propaganda.

[454] From the 1960s onward, government policy was influenced by the technocratic faction[455] in the regime which advocated modernisation projects including expansion of the educational system and industrialisation, leading to a fast-growing national economy with increases in general standards of living and quality of life in the city.

[472] Lisbon's metro system was expanded with the addition of several new stations, among them the transportation hub of Gare do Oriente, designed by the Spanish neofuturistic architect, Santiago Calatrava,[473] and finished in time for the Expo '98 world's fair on land east of the city centre in Parque das Nações (Park of Nations).