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Amsterdam’s Dutch and Sephardic Merchants in the Atlantic Supply Trade and the Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century

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Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century

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Abstract

In this chapter, the author presents evidence from freight records researched at the City Archives of Amsterdam which illustrate that after trade and navigation restrictions were imposed, Dutch and Sephardic merchant trade diverged. Whereas Dutch merchants from Amsterdam held business interest in Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century through the supply trade, it was Amsterdam’s Sephardic merchants who engaged primarily in the sugar trade. As the navigation acts required all trade to be conducted by English merchants and be directed to the English market, Sephardic merchants requested and were granted “denizenship.” Meanwhile, Amsterdam remained the primary sugar refining center for the European market and Sephardic merchants played a significant role in sustaining the Amsterdam sugar market through most of the seventeenth century.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Appendix 1 for an explanation of the data source and summary of research findings. See also Yda Schreuder, “Evidence from the Notarial Protocols in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives about Trade Relationships between Amsterdam and Barbados in the 17th Century,” in Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. 12, December 2006, pp. 54–82.

  2. 2.

    Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s,” in Richard L. Kagan and Philip d. Morgan (eds.), Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500–1800 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2009), pp. 33–49 and, by the same author, “Essequibo Liberties: The Link between Jewish Brazil and Jewish Suriname,” Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 42/43, 2010–2011, pp. 77–82. See also Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonist, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York University Press, New York, London, 2011).

  3. 3.

    C. Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange (Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT, 2006), pp. 87–89; 100–107. The expanded maritime facilities included the physical infrastructure in the form of warehouses, wharves, weight-houses, and markets as well as the institutional infrastructure including legal structures and various forms of organizations like charter companies and, of course, the shipbuilding industry.

  4. 4.

    Officially, the collection is called Archives of Notary Publics of Amsterdam. Access number of the archives is 5075. Period covered, 1578–1915. See also Appendix 1 with notes on evidence from freight records and protocols. See Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market (2006), Chapter 5, pp. 183–213, for a detailed discussion on the organization of trade in Amsterdam.

  5. 5.

    The collections by geographical destinations are found in the Archives Inventory of S. Hart (Inventory 30452). In the Geographical Index, we find two general collections West India, Collection 361 and 362, which contains 28 records from 1651 to 1660, and Barbados, Collection 367–369, which contains 350 records from 1634 to 1699, and, Jamaica, 20 records from 1613 to 1751. The Index file on sugar contains 150 records or protocols and covers the period from 1645 to 1697.

  6. 6.

    The City Archives maintains an excellent system of indexing and digitalization of records. For a description of the “Archief Bank” see the archives website, https://archief.amsterdam/

  7. 7.

    For a summary and overview of the evidence derived from the Notarial Archives of Amsterdam, see Appendix 1. In the library of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society is an unpublished paper by N.C. Kieft from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands titled “Windmills in the West Indies: Dutch entrepreneurs and the development of Barbados, 1621–1655” (no year given). The paper contains lists with information about the skipper (but not the contracting merchant), name of vessel, origin of vessel, year of act recorded, and cargo. The lists do not include the records for the period 1669–1699. During the later period, Portuguese Jewish merchants from Amsterdam conducted trade with Barbados and are prominently involved in the sugar trade. Apparently, Kieft was primarily interested in Dutch merchant trade.

  8. 8.

    In the first half of the seventeenth century, there was also an active trade in tobacco and other colonial products between Middelburg or Rotterdam and the West Indies. The Notarial Archives of the tobacco trade can be found in either or both of these cities. The Rotterdam and Middelburg collections are not included in this research study as the focus here is on the sugar trade and specifically the Sephardic Jewish merchant community in Amsterdam involved in the trade.

  9. 9.

    See, for instance, Christopher Ebert, Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Economy, 1550–1630 (Brill, Leiden, 2008).

  10. 10.

    E.M. Koen, “The Earliest Sources Relating to the Portuguese Jews in the Municipal Archives of Amsterdam up to 1620,” in Studia Rosenthaliana , vol. IV, no. 1970, pp. 25–42, supplemented by 661 records analyzed by Daniel M. Swetschinski for the period 1638–1676; see Daniel M. Swetschinski, Kinship and Commerce: The Foundations of Portuguese Jewish Life in Seventeenth-Century Holland, (Van Gorcum, Assen, 1981), pp. 52–74.

  11. 11.

    Catia Antunes, Globalisation in the Early Modern Period: The economic relationship between Amsterdam and Lisbon, 1640–1705 (Aksant Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 2004).

  12. 12.

    The Charter of the WIC stated that the company had the monopoly on the Atlantic trade south of the tropic of cancer. Besides, the company had the right to engage in military operations against Spanish and Portuguese interests and the right to found colonies (see Chap. 2).

  13. 13.

    Studia Rosenthaliana is a scholarly journal on the history, culture, and heritage of the Jews in the Netherlands. Established in 1967 by the late Dr. L. Fuks, the journal covers a variety of subjects such as the history of the Portuguese Jews in the Low Countries, topics on the local history of Jewish communities, and art and literature.

  14. 14.

    E.M. Koen, “Notarial Records Relating to the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam up to 1639,” in Studia Rosenthaliana , vol. 1, no. 1, 1967 – vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, covering the period 1595–1639. In addition, Swetschinski collected records for the period 1638–1676, while others have researched records specific to their research topic.

  15. 15.

    For the purpose of introduction to this chapter, I will only review a few of the studies and refer the reader to previous chapters in which I referenced other secondary source materials and research studies.

  16. 16.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim, 1609–1660,” Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 12, no. 1/2, July 1978, pp. 1–61; Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998); Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, London, 2016), pp. 168–169; Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, London, Portland OR, 2000); Christopher Ebert, Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Economy, 1550–1630 (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2008); Jessica Roitman, The Same but Different? Inter-cultural Trade and the Sephardim, 1595–1640 (Brill, Leiden, 2011), p. 23, pp. 47–51, and, pp. 251–255.

  17. 17.

    E.M. Koen, “Duarte Fernandes, Koopman van de Portugese Natie te Amsterdam,” Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 2, no. 2, July 1968, pp. 178–193 (with a summary in English).

  18. 18.

    See also Chap. 2. Roitman, The Same but Different (2011), p. 23, pp. 47–51, and, pp. 251–255.

  19. 19.

    Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans (2000); Chapter 3, pp. 102–164; Table 3.1, p. 103.

  20. 20.

    See also, Antunes, Globalization in the Early Modern Period (2004), pp. 91–122; 123–140.

  21. 21.

    Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans (2000), pp. 126–130; see also, Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim,” 1978, pp. 1–61; p. 28.

  22. 22.

    See also, Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Conflict and Opportunity in ‘Europe’s Other Sea’: The Adventure of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, vol. 72, 1982, pp. 212–240. In the 1650s and 1660s, Suriname was under English control but attracted mostly Portuguese Jewish refugee merchants from Dutch Brazil some of whom established themselves as sugar planters in the colony . Suriname became a Dutch colony in 1675 after which it expanded sugar production and contributed to Amsterdam’s sugar market in the last quarter of the seventeenth century although, as documented, to a lesser extent than the contraband sugar trade via the islands.

  23. 23.

    See Appendix 1. Archive S. Hart, # 478. The index card file on sugar contains a few entries from the end of the sixteenth century (Not. Arch. 86/fol.165–166, Not. Arch. 42/fol.13, and, Not. Arch. 8/fol.121 G.A.A.) in which the skipper or owner of the vessel is Dutch and the merchant Portuguese and delivery is made from Brazil and/or São Tomé. It is not clear why the records are absent from the file between the end of the sixteenth century and 1645, but it is possible that some of the records are found in the file on Portuguese merchants.

  24. 24.

    November 10, 1645, Not. Arch. 1075/168, G.A.A. The vessel returned with other staple goods and the merchants are compensated.

  25. 25.

    March 25, 1646, Not. Arch. 849/98 and 99 (contracted for by a London merchant with partners in Amsterdam), G.A.A; June 3, 1647, Not. Arch. 1294/68; June 22, 1647, Not. Arch. 1574/405; November 9, 1647, Not. Arch. 1294/191; March 16, 1648, Not. Arch. 1647/4; May 1, 1648, Not. Arch. 1064/1065, G.A.A.

  26. 26.

    January 30, 1651, Not. Arch. 24, 21a/27, G.A.A.

  27. 27.

    November 23, 1654, Not. Arch. 1802/650, G.A.A.

  28. 28.

    In 1654, almost all the entries in the sugar index file concern trade via Portugal. The records in which Pernambuco is mentioned refer to disputes or loss of property and cargo suggesting severe disruptions in trade.

  29. 29.

    October 1658, Not. Arch. 2261B/756, G.A.A.

  30. 30.

    August 14, 1660, Not. Arch. 1540/208, G.A.A.

  31. 31.

    February 8, 1656, Not. Arch. 1306/24, G.A.A.

  32. 32.

    February 26, 1659, Not. Arch. 1540/4; June 23, 1660, Not. Arch. 1540/174, G.A.A. Ports referred to are Setubal, Aveiro, and Villa Nova.

  33. 33.

    See also Jonathan I. Israel, “The Canary Islands and the Sephardic Atlantic Trade Network (1620–1660),” in Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora (Brill, Leiden, 2002), pp. 269–289.

  34. 34.

    Terceira in the Azores is referred to four times during the 1656–1660 period in trade conducted by Portuguese merchants. In 1659, an interesting freight contract was signed by two Sephardic Jewish merchants from Amsterdam in trade with Terceira and Sao Miguel. A total of 100 barrels of sugar were contracted for. The merchants in charge of loading the sugar at Terceira and Sao Miguel are referred to by name and the sugar is supposed to be packed in barrels from Bahia or Pernambuco.

  35. 35.

    August 14, 1657, Not. Arch. 1539/63; February 12, Not. Arch. 1539/272; February 25, 1659, Not. Arch. 1540/3, G.A.A. The entry for August 14, 1657, is for Jeronimo Nunes da Costa, Agent for the Portuguese Crown in Amsterdam. The shipment of tobacco and sugar was to be delivered to either le Havre or Amsterdam. Da Costa’s trade in Brazil sugar via the Azores continued through the 1680s. Jonathan I. Israel, “An Amsterdam Jewish Merchant of the Golden Age: Jeronimo Nunes da Costa (1620–1697), Agent of Portugal in the Dutch Republic,” in Studia Rosenthaliana , vol. 18, no. 1, January 1984, pp. 21–40.

  36. 36.

    April 23, 1659, Not. Arch. 1540/31, G.A.A. A total of 100 barrels of sugar were contracted for.

  37. 37.

    See also Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans (2000), pp. 154–55.

  38. 38.

    May 13, 1660, Not. Arch. 1540/163, G.A.A.

  39. 39.

    See Israel, “An Amsterdam Jewish Merchant of the Golden Age,” 1984, pp. 21–40.

  40. 40.

    Israel, “An Amsterdam Jewish Merchant of the Golden Age,” 1984, pp. 30–31. Israel refers to a protocol in the Notarial Archives (March 24, 1680, Not. Arch. 4093, G.A.A.) that shows that he was still importing large quantities each year, which were stored in his various warehouses in Amsterdam.

  41. 41.

    Israel, “An Amsterdam Jewish Merchant of the Golden Age,” 1984, p. 33.

  42. 42.

    July 22, 1661, Not. Arch. 1541/103 G.A.A.

  43. 43.

    July 5, 1661, Not. Arch. 4547/89, G.A.A.

  44. 44.

    January 19, 1662, Not. Arch. 2794/13 G.A.A.

  45. 45.

    March 2, 1665, Not. Arch. 2261 B/1120 G.A.A.

  46. 46.

    June 24, 1664, Not. Arch. 2157/157 G.A.A.

  47. 47.

    April 6, 1666, Not. Arch. 1543/45, G.A.A.; September 7, 1668, Not. Arch. 1543/248 G.A.A.; April 7, 1667, Not. Arch 1543/75 G.A.A.

  48. 48.

    June 11, 1681, Not. Arch. 3686/543 G.A.A.; April 16 and 17, 1685, Not. Arch. 4114/481–482, G.A.A.

  49. 49.

    May 23, 1685, Not. Arch. 3695/259, G.A.A.

  50. 50.

    May 23, 1685, Not. Arch. 3695/259 G.A.A.

  51. 51.

    July 12, 1692, Not. Arch. 4773, G.A.A. The record is found in the card-index file on Barbados. In 1688, the WIC allowed foreign vessels to trade with St. Eustatius. They had to pay a 2 percent recognition fee on both incoming and outgoing cargo. From the English perspective, colonial trade with St. Eustatius or Curacao was illegal. Among the residents on the island at the time were Dutch and Sephardic merchants as well as residents from other Caribbean islands including Barbados mariners. Between January and August 1688, eight ships with full cargo of sugar from French and British colonies left St. Eustatius for the Dutch Republic. In the eighteenth century, St. Eustatius became the main sugar transfer and reexport colony in the Eastern Caribbean. See Victor Enthoven, “‘That Abominable nest of Pirates’: St. Eustatius and the North Americans, 1680–1780,” Early American Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, Special Issue: Anglo-Dutch Revolutions, 2012, pp. 239–301; 258–259. Between 1720 and 1780, sugar export from St. Eustatius to the Netherlands grew to 22.7 millions of pounds and surpassed exports from Suriname (the “Second Brazil”) as the main supplier for the Dutch sugar refineries. Most of the sugar came from the French and English sugar colonies.

  52. 52.

    See my paper: “A True Global Community: Sephardic Jews, the Sugar Trade and Barbados in the Seventeenth Century,” in Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. 50, December, 2004.

  53. 53.

    See also N.C. Kieft, “Wind mills in the West Indies: Dutch entrepreneurs and the development of Barbados, 1621–1655” (unpublished paper, no year given, deposited with the Barbados Museum and Historical Society). See p. 19: Figure 1, Dutch ships in Barbados. The record was derived from data in the Notarial Archives, City Archives of Amsterdam, index cards 1633–1669. We notice that trade with Barbados peaked in 1651. See also Appendix 1.

  54. 54.

    It is possible that some of the trade is diverted to the French colonies during the period 1651–1655, See Klooster, “An Overview of Dutch Trade with the Americas, 1600–1800,” in Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce (Brill, Leiden, 2003), pp. 370–372.

  55. 55.

    Pieter Emmer, “The Jewish Moment and the Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650,” in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 2001) pp. 501–531; 512–514, and Seymour Drescher, “Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic slave Trade,” in P. Bernardini and N. Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800, (Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 2001), pp. 439–470.

  56. 56.

    July 30, 1658, Not. Arch. 2205/173, G.A.A.

  57. 57.

    See Fig. 4.1. Since Sephardic merchants appear more prominent in trade with Barbados after 1650, and since we suspect that trade conducted among family members was not always recorded, the volume of trade with Amsterdam may have been far greater than reported. Trade via London in the second half of the seventeenth century is not included in this analysis!

  58. 58.

    May 16, 1634; Not. Arch. 694/61, G.A.A.; September 16, 1634; Not. Arch 694B/63, G.A.A.

  59. 59.

    November 21, 1634; Not. Arch. 1225/49v, G.A.A.

  60. 60.

    November 30, 1637; Not. Arch. 677/26vo. G.A.A.

  61. 61.

    December 11, 1635; Not. Arch. 1143/117, G.A.A.

  62. 62.

    December 12, 1635; Not. Arch. 1143/118, G.A.A.

  63. 63.

    November 21, 1635; Not. Arch. 671/355, G.A.A; and November 23, 1637; Not. Arch. 676/178, G.A.A.

  64. 64.

    In the trade records, the skipper is almost always Dutch, whereas the merchants may be one or several, of Dutch origin or foreign, including Converso from Spain or Portugal, London, or Antwerp, but also Sephardim from Amsterdam and later on Bridgetown, London, Hamburg, and other ports included in the network.

  65. 65.

    Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Kinship and Commerce: The Foundations of Portuguese Jewish Life in Seventeenth Century Holland,” in Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 15, 1981, 52–74. See also, Antunes, Globalisation in the Early Modern Period (2004).

  66. 66.

    December 18, 1635; Not. Arch; 672/56v and 695/256v, G.A.A.

  67. 67.

    December 18, 1635; Not. Arch.701/908, G.A.A.

  68. 68.

    April 17, 1636; Not. Arch. 672/38, 119v, G.A.A.

  69. 69.

    July 24, 1636, Not. Arch. 1045/66, G.A.A.

  70. 70.

    October 29. 1636; Not. Arch. 1261A/417, G.A.A.; November 8, 1636, Not. Arch. 1045/359, and November 23, 1636; Not. Arch. 676/178, March 15, 1641; Not. Arch. 489/98, G.A.A.

  71. 71.

    November 30, 1638, Not. Arch. 867/401, G.A.A; December 1, 1638, Not. Arch. 867/403, G.A.A. It was common in the early seventeenth century in Amsterdam for reconverted Sephardic Jews to hide their identity for fear of persecution by using Dutch last names or aliases (see also, Jonathan I. Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim, 1609–1660,” Studia Rosenthaliana , vol. 12, no. 1/2 July, 1978, pp. 1–61; pp. 57–61). Sometimes, their last name referred to the place where they resided. In wills or testaments, we often read the various names a person had used in his lifetime.

  72. 72.

    Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989); Swetschinski, Kinship and Commerce (1981); Odette Vlessing, “The Portuguese-Jewish Merchant Community in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” in C. Lesger and L. Noordegraaf, (eds.), Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times. Merchants and Industrialists within the Orbit of the Dutch Staple Market (The Hague, 1995).

  73. 73.

    December 12, 1638; Not. Arch. 922/reg11.fol. 46, G.A.A.

  74. 74.

    December 1639; Not. Arch. 599/587, G.A.A.

  75. 75.

    January 4, 1639; Not. Arch. 1261 B/375, March 19, 1639; Not. Arch. 1053/134v-135v, December 16, 1641; Not. Arch. 732A/389, G.A.A.

  76. 76.

    January 28, 1639; Not. Arch. 696/84, G.A.A.

  77. 77.

    November 11, 1637; Not. Arch. 677/26vo, and January 6, 1643; Not. Arch. 525/41, G.A.A.

  78. 78.

    January 21, 1640; Not. Arch. 1609/417, 418; and Not. Arch. 956/515, G.A.A.

  79. 79.

    January 26, 1643; Not. Arch. 1571/65, February 20, 1643; Not. Arch. 1571/147, March 5, 1643; Not. Arch. 491/78, G.A.A.

  80. 80.

    Hilary D. Beckles, A History of Barbados: from Amerindian settlement to nation-state (Cambridge, 1990), 8; Vincent T. Harlow, A History of Barbados, 1625–1685 (London, 1926, reprint New York, 1969), 10–13.

  81. 81.

    Harlow, Barbados, 22–23, 36–37; Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657), pp. 109–112.

  82. 82.

    See N.C. Kieft, “Windmills in the West Indies,” Appendices 1 and 2, 22–24.

  83. 83.

    August 22, 1647; Not. Arch. 849/123, G.A.A. From an earlier record (June 3, 1647, Not. Arch. 1294/68, G.A.A.), it appears that Constant Silvester had been very busy in trade between Barbados and various destinations in Europe. On a homebound journey to Amsterdam where he was to deliver various products (tobacco, cotton, indigo, and sugar) taken on board in Barbados, he diverted to La Rochelle (France). The protocol is a testimony from the skipper on board of the vessel in presence of members of the board of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company.

  84. 84.

    See Wim Klooster, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century: an Atlantic Partnership,” in Allan I. MacInnes and Arthur H. Williamson (eds.), Shaping the Stuart World 1603–1714: That Atlantic Connection (Brill, Leiden, 2006), pp. 261–282.

  85. 85.

    March 25, 1646; Not. Arch. 849/98 and 99, G.A.A.

  86. 86.

    January 18, 1650; Not. Arch. 1093/118, and 1751/52, G.A.A.

  87. 87.

    January 30, 1651; Not. Arch. 2421a/27, G.A.A.

  88. 88.

    The record shows that from 1647 onwards, sugar is more prevalently recorded as return cargo while tobacco, cotton, indigo, and ginger become secondary trade goods.

  89. 89.

    May 4, 1649; Not. Arch. 1091/2, and May 12, 1649; Not. Arch. 1089/30, G.A.A.

  90. 90.

    Abraham de Fonseca, merchant in Amsterdam, was likely a family member of Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, who was a rabbi in Amsterdam and had been rabbi in Brazil (Recife). Members of the family were later found in Barbados. See my article, “A True Global Community,” in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (2004).

  91. 91.

    June 9, 1648, Not. Arch. 1690A/1009, G.A.A.

  92. 92.

    James C. Boyajian, “New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy,” in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 2001), 471–484. An earlier record dated 1645 suggests that the WIC had delivered slaves to Barbados after a vessel was captured from the Portuguese which was to deliver the same to Brazil (see December 28, 1649, Not. Arch. 2278 II/63 and 64, G.A.A.).

  93. 93.

    Odette Vlessing, “The Portuguese-Jewish Merchant Community,” in Lesger and Noordegraaf, (eds.), Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship (1995).

  94. 94.

    Israel, Dutch Primacy (1989), pp. 265–266.

  95. 95.

    Odette Vlessing, “The Economic Influence of the Portuguese Jews on Dutch the Dutch Golden Age,” in Ilruolo Economica delle Minoranza in Europa, secc. XIII–XV, 2000, pp. 303–324.

  96. 96.

    See my article: “A True Global Community” 2004.

  97. 97.

    March 5, 1650; Not. Arch. 1093/270, G.A.A.; November 5, 1652; Not. Arch. 1102/19, 20, G.A.A.; November 29, 1652; Not. Arch. 1102/164, 165, G.A.A. As noted earlier, Richard Peers, the governor of Barbados at the time, had maintained trade contracts with Amsterdam merchants in the 1640s when the tobacco trade still prevailed.

  98. 98.

    January 20, 1653, Not. Arch. 1103/109, G.A.A.

  99. 99.

    December 6, 1651; Not. Arch. 1535/146.; May 11 and 14, 1651; Not. Arch. 2421a/147, G.A.A.

  100. 100.

    November 5, 1652; Not. Arch. 1102/19v and 20, G.A.A; August 6, 1652, Not. Arch. 1100/329, G.A.A.

  101. 101.

    January 14, 1651; Not. Arch. 849/186, G.A.A.

  102. 102.

    May 27, 1652; Not. Arch. 1100/90, G.A.A.

  103. 103.

    July 13, 1651, Not. Arch. 2112/167, G.A.A.

  104. 104.

    See Jonathan I. Israel, Conflicts of Empires: Spain, the Low Countries and the Struggle for World Supremacy, 1585–1713 (Hambledon Press, London, 1997), pp. 209–214.

  105. 105.

    For instance, Jacques Thierry (1604–1677), shipowner and underwriter born in London trading via England after he had settled in Amsterdam, and William Davidson (1615–1689), discussed earlier in Chap. 3, who was Sir William Davidson, Commissioner and Agent of the Royal Company of England residing in Amsterdam since the 1640s turned Royalist in 1653 and was the instigator along with several Amsterdam Sephardic merchants in designing a scheme to secure the sugar trade for the benefit of the Amsterdam market in the 1660s. William Davidson was a Scottish cloth merchant who settled in Amsterdam in the 1640s and traded in the Baltic region.

  106. 106.

    October 26, 1654, Not. Arch. 1110/67, G.A.A; July 30, 1655, Not. Arch. 2199/124 and 125, G.A.A.

  107. 107.

    October 1655, Not. Arch. 1115/48, and 1115/106, G.A.A.

  108. 108.

    July 30, 1658; Not. Arch. 2205/173 and September 17, 1658; Not. Arch. 2205/440, G.A.A.

  109. 109.

    See my article “A True Global Community,” 2004. See also Chap. 5.

  110. 110.

    October 24, 1659, Not. Arch. 2207/666, G.A.A.

  111. 111.

    October 24, 1659, Not. Arch. 2207/666, G.A.A.

  112. 112.

    October 19, 1662, Not. Arch. 3004/166, G.A.A.

  113. 113.

    December 16, 1659, Not. Arch. 1131/283; and July 15, 1660, Not. Arch. 2208/1054, G.A.A.

  114. 114.

    Herbert I. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century (Williamsport, 1937); Johan G. van Dillen, “Vreemdelingen te Amsterdam in de eerste helft der zeventiende eeuw: Portugese Joden,” in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 50, 1935, 4–35; Vlessing, “The Economic Influence of the Portuguese Jews,” 2000; Israel, Dutch Primacy (1989); Swetchinski, Kinship and Commerce (1981).

  115. 115.

    November 29, 1660, Not. Arch. 905/793; February 11, 1662, Not. Arch. 907/58; September 12, 1670, Not. Arch. 2234/129; July 22, 1683, Not. Arch. 5129/312; October 20, 1683, Not. Arch. 4108/212, G.A.A.

  116. 116.

    March 10, 1662, Not. Arch. 1140/282, G.A.A.

  117. 117.

    September 29, 1662, Not. Arch. 2156/310, G.A.A.

  118. 118.

    March 12, 1664, Not. Arch. 1148/205, G.A.A; June 24, 1664; Not. Arch. 2157/154, G.A.A.

  119. 119.

    April 29, 1669, Not. Arch. 2789/133, G.A.A.

  120. 120.

    September 25, 1669, Not. Arch. 3878/354, G.A.A.

  121. 121.

    September 7, 1670, Not. Arch. 3679A/134, G.A.A. (original in Spanish).

  122. 122.

    For a discussion of aliases used among major Sephardic merchants in Amsterdam in trade with various parts of the world, see Jonathan I. Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim, 1609–1660,” in Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 12, 1978, pp. 1–82; pp. 58–61.

  123. 123.

    October 20, 1683, Not. Arch. 4108/212, G.A.A.

  124. 124.

    October 3, 1672, Not. Arch. 4075/240, G.A.A.

  125. 125.

    April 26, 1668, Not. Arch. 2226/977, 978, G.A.A.

  126. 126.

    April 18, 1675, Not. Arch. 4080 and, October 22, 1675, Not. Arch. 4081 and November 19, 1699, Not. Arch. 5873/77, G.A.A.

  127. 127.

    See Chap. 7 for more about the reexport trade in sugar between London and Amsterdam . Toward the end of the seventeenth century, deliveries from Suriname supplemented supplies delivered from London and the sugar refining industry in Amsterdam revived to some extent in the eighteenth century.

  128. 128.

    It was not uncommon to share technology and relocate processing capacity between the continent and England as essays presented in Stefan Manz, Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, John R. Davis (eds.) Migration and Transfer from Germany to Britain, 1660–1914 (K. G. Saur Verlag, Munich, 2007) attest to.

  129. 129.

    In the last chapter I will detail on the raw sugar reexport trade from London to Amsterdam.

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    Yda Schreuder

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Schreuder, Y. (2019). Amsterdam’s Dutch and Sephardic Merchants in the Atlantic Supply Trade and the Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century. In: Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97061-5_4

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