The rise of the nation-state and the allure of empire

between nationalism and cosmopolitanism

pp. 169-194

in: Gérard Delanty, Formations of European modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

Two events that loom large in the making of European modernity occurred in the eighteenth century: the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 and in 1789 the French Revolution. Both events had a European-wide significance in that they had a considerable impact across Europe in both the shape of the natural and political landscape of the continent. While the Enlightenment emphasized a narrative of progress and freedom, consciousness of crisis also lay at the source of the imagination of the age. The Lisbon earthquake had a huge impact on Europe due both to the physical effects that were widely felt across Europe of the earthquake that struck on 1755 and due to the destruction it brought to Lisbon, which was mostly burnt and destroyed following a tidal wave that followed in the aftermath of the earthquake, it was the first example of European-wide consciousness of a catastrophe that brought a certain sense of a wider unity to European intellectuals who debated its causes and significance. The event was not perceived as divine retribution—in fact it marked the end of theodicy—nor as a Portuguese catastrophe, but as a European event and a challenge for European science.