The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800

Jews and Judaism played a significant role in the history of the expansion of Europe to the west as well as in the history of the economic, social, and religious development of the New World. They played an important role in the discovery, colonization, and eventually exploitation of the resources of the New World. Alone among the European peoples who came to the Americas in the colonial period, Jews were dispersed throughout the hemisphere; indeed, they were the only cohesive European ethnic or religious group that lived under both Catholic and Protestant regimes, which makes their study particularly fruitful from a comparative perspective. As distinguished from other religious or ethnic minorities, the Jewish struggle was not only against an overpowering and fierce nature but also against the political regimes that ruled over the various colonies of the Americas and often looked unfavorably upon the establishment and tleration of Jewish communities in their own territory. Jews managed to survive and occasionally to flourish against all odds, and their history in the Americas is one of the more fascinating chapters in the early modern history of European expansion.

Jews and Judaism played a significant role in the history of the expansion of Europe to the west as well as in the history of the economic, social, and religious development of the New World. They played an important role in the discovery, colonization, and eventually exploitation of the resources of the New World. Alone among the European peoples who came to the Americas in the colonial period, Jews were dispersed throughout the hemisphere; indeed, they were the only cohesive European ethnic or religious group that lived under both Catholic and Protestant regimes, which makes their study particularly fruitful from a comparative perspective. As distinguished from other religious or ethnic minorities, the Jewish struggle was not only against an overpowering and fierce nature but also against the political regimes that ruled over the various colonies of the Americas and often looked unfavorably upon the establishment and tleration of Jewish communities in their own territory. Jews managed to survive and occasionally to flourish against all odds, and their history in the Americas is one of the more fascinating chapters in the early modern history of European expansion.

List of Illustrations

Preface
Norman Fiering

Introduction: A Milder Colonization: Jewish Expansion to the New World, and the New World in the Jewish Consciousness of the Early Modern Era
Paolo Bernardini

PART I: THE OLD NEWWORLD: IDEAS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF AMERICA IN EUROPEAN AND JEWISH CONSCIOUSNESS AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Chapter 1. Biblical History and the Americas: The Legend of Solomon’s Ophir, 1492–1591
James Romm

Chapter 2. Knowledge of Newly Discovered Lands among Jewish Communities of Europe (from 1492 to the Thirty Years’ War)
Noah J. Efron

Chapter 3. Jewish Scientists and the Origin of Modern Navigation
Patricia Seed

Chapter 4. The Hope of the Netherlands: Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Idea of America
Benjamin Schmidt

Chapter 5. Israel in America: The Wanderings of the Lost Ten Tribes from Mikveigh Yisrael to Timothy McVeigh
David S. Katz

PART II: IDENTITY AT STAKE: CONCEALING, PRESERVING, AND RESHAPING JUDAISM AMONG THE CONVERSOS AND MARRANOS OF SPANISH AMERICA

Chapter 6. New Christian, Marrano, Jew
Robert Rowland

Chapter 7. Marrano Religiosity in Hispanic America in the Seventeenth Century
Nathan Wachtel

Chapter 8. Crypto-Jews and the Mexican Holy Office in the Seventeenth Century
Solange Alberro

Chapter 9. The Participation of New Christians and Crypto-Jews in the Conquest, Colonization, and Trade of Spanish America, 1521–1660
Eva Alexandra Uchmany

Chapter 10. Crypto-Jews and New Christians in Colonial Peru and Chile
Günter Böhm

PART III: THE LUSO-BRAZILIAN EXPERIENCE: JEWS IN PORTUGUESE LATIN AMERICA

Chapter 11. Marranos and the Inquisition: On the Gold Route in Minas Gerais, Brazil
Anita Novinsky

Chapter 12. Outcasts from the Kingdom: The Inquisition and the Banishment of New Christians to Brazil
Geraldo Pieroni

PART IV: FROM TOLERATION TO EXPULSION: IDENTITY,TRADE, AND STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL IN FRANCE AND CARIBBEAN FRENCH AMERICA

Chapter 13. The Portuguese Jewish Nation of Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne: The American Dimension
Gérard Nahon

Chapter 14. Atlantic Trade and Sephardim Merchants in Eighteenth-Century France: The Case of Bordeaux
Silvia Marzagalli

Chapter 15. Jewish Settlements in the French Colonies in the Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Cayenne) and the “Black Code"
Mordechai Arbell

Chapter 16. New Christians/”New Whites”: Sephardic Jews, Free People of Color, and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue, 1760–1789
John D. Garrigus

PART V: BLOSSOMING IN ANOTHERWORLD: THE JEWS AND THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN DUTCH AMERICA

Chapter 17. The Jews of Dutch America
Jonathan I. Israel

Chapter 18. The Jews in Suriname and Curaçao
Wim Klooster

Chapter 19. An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights and Opportunities in Brazil, New Netherland, and New York
James Homer Williams

Chapter 20. Antecedents and Remnants of Jodensavanne: The Synagogues and Cemeteries of the First Permanent Plantation Settlement of New World Jews
Rachel Frankel

PART VI: “THE BROKERS OF THEWORLD”: AMERICAN JEWS, NEW CHRISTIANS, AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Chapter 21. Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade
Seymour Drescher

Chapter 22. New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy
James C. Boyajian

Chapter 23. New Christians as Sugar Cultivators and Traders in the Portuguese Atlantic, 1450–1800
Ernst Pijning

Chapter 24. The Jewish Moment and the Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650
Pieter Emmer

PART VII: THE JEWS IN COLONIAL BRITISH AMERICA

Chapter 25. The Jews in British America
Jonathan D. Sarna

Notes on Contributors
Name Index
Place Index
Subject Index