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The Mission of Menasseh Ben Israel and Cromwell’s Western Design

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

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Abstract

Well aware of the success of Amsterdam sustaining the European sugar market, the English under Cromwell hoped to attract Sephardic merchants to conduct their colonial trade. As he designed a plan for westward expansion in the Caribbean, Cromwell consulted his advisors on contacts with and expertise of Sephardic Jews in trade with Spanish territories. In Amsterdam, in the meantime, Menasseh ben Israel and the leadership of the Sephardic community considered the opportunity for readmission of Jews to England. A conference was held at Whitehall in December 1655 which resulted in a policy of granting residency and trade privileges to Jews in London and the colonies. A network analysis based on genealogical date sources established that the Sephardic community extended from Brazil to Barbados and connected with Amsterdam and London.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Carla G. Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, London, 2004), Chapter 5, pp. 157–182; Timothy Venning, Cromwellian Foreign Policy (St. Martin’s Press, London, 1995).

  2. 2.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim, 1609–1660,” in Studia Rosenthaliana, Vol. 12, nos. 1/2, July 1978, pp. 1–61; Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, London, 2016), pp. 174–183; 172–174, and Appendix A, pp. 267–268. Klooster notes a shift in trade to the French Caribbean colonies in which merchants from Zeeland (Middelburg and Vlissingen) were particularly active. Like in Barbados where the Dutch were credited with making the transition to sugar cultivation, the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique owed a debt to Dutch merchants in supplying the means to expand sugar production including transfer of technology and delivering slaves in the 1660s. There is evidence that Sephardic merchants exiled from Brazil had settled on Martinique in 1654 and conducted trade in tobacco and sugar with Amsterdam; see Jonathan I. Israel, “The Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement of the Mid-Seventeenth Century (1645–1657),” in Y. Kaplan, et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and his World (Brill, Leiden, 1989), pp. 139–163; pp. 150–151.

  3. 3.

    From 1646 to 1661, the number of Jewish depositors with the Amsterdam Bank of Exchange increased from 126 to 243, a percentage increase from 7 percent to 12 1/2 percent of the total number of depositors. See Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim,” 1978, pp. 1–61; p. 24, pp. 29–30. Israel attributes the sudden increase in wealth during the period 1640–1660 to the resumption of Dutch-Portuguese trade and the large influx of Jewish exiles from Brazil to Amsterdam.

  4. 4.

    Catia Antunes, Globalisation in the Early Modern Period: The Economic Relationship between Amsterdam and Lisbon, 1640–1705 (Aksant, Amsterdam, 2004).

  5. 5.

    Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim,” 1978.

  6. 6.

    Venning, Cromwellian Foreign Policy (1995), pp. 71–90.

  7. 7.

    Venning, Cromwellian Foreign Policy (1995), pp. 79–80.

  8. 8.

    Venning, Cromwellian Foreign Policy (1995), pp. 153–171. Acceptance of the terms of the Navigation Act was seen by the Dutch as subordinating Dutch free trade to the British protectionist trading system. This insulted Dutch pride and damaged their economy, but the onset of the war was the actions of the English navy and privateers against Dutch shipping. In 1651, 140 Dutch merchantmen were seized on the open seas. During January 1652 alone, another 30 Dutch ships were captured at sea and taken to English ports. Protests were made addressed to England by the States General of the United Provinces but were of no avail: the English Parliament showed no inclination toward curbing the seizures of Dutch ships.

  9. 9.

    Lucien Wolf (ed.), Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell (Macmillan and Co., London, 1901).

  10. 10.

    The Edict of Expulsion given by Edward I in 1290 expelled all Jews from England until Cromwell allowed Jews to return after 1656. At the time of the expulsion, there were about 2000 Jews in England. In the mid-seventeenth century, there were few Jews but several well-established New Christian merchants residing in England; see Yosef Kaplan, “The Jewish Profile of the Spanish-Portuguese community of London during the Seventeenth Century,” in An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2000), pp. 155–167.

  11. 11.

    Kaplan et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989).

  12. 12.

    Peter Toon (ed.), Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970); D. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603–1655 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982).

  13. 13.

    Reformists in Cromwell’s circle were quite influential and likely determined Cromwell’s intellectual views and actions. Cromwell was sympathetic to the Jewish cause, partly because of his Protestant background and his Reformist leanings but chiefly because he considered the importance of the participation of the Jewish merchant for English commerce; see the various papers published in Kaplan (et al.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989). Jonathan I. Israel, representing the camp which emphasized the economic and political conditions; see Israel’s contribution in the same volume, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement of the Mid-Seventeenth Century, 1645–1657,” pp. 139–163. See also, Jonathan I. Israel, “Dutch Sephardic Jewry, Millenarian Politics and the Struggle for Brazil (1640–1654),” in Jonathan I. Israel and David Katz (eds.), Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews: Essay in Honour of Richard H. Popkin (Brill, Leiden, 1990), pp. 76–97.

  14. 14.

    Wolf, Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission (1901), p. XXXI, states that Thurloe, secretary to the mission, had several meetings with Menasseh and that the Synagogue entertained the members of the mission. It is speculated that Menasseh was encouraged to draft his “Humble Address” for a proposed visit to England which was later presented to Whitehall. See also, Israel, in Kaplan (et al.) Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), p. 153.

  15. 15.

    In fact, it took another four years before Menasseh conducted his mission to England and efforts to establish contacts and plot dispersal schemes of Jews from Amsterdam preoccupied his time. Between 1651 and 1655, he was on a path to become part of the Swedish Queen Christina’s intellectual entourage. Shortly after the publication of The Hope of Israel in 1650, Menasseh was offered the opportunity to become expert library advisor to Queen Christina through contacts with Isaac Vossius, the son of the famous Dutch philologist. Menasseh proposed to become her advisor on collecting Hebrew texts but depended on the favors of Vossius to make the plans materialize, which, due to various intriguing reasons, never came about. Though Menasseh’s mission to Queen Christina was unsuccessful, ulterior motives may have played a role in pursuing her favors. It was well known that Queen Christina sought and was offered the favors of wealthy Jewish bankers and merchants, including Diego Teixeiro, banker and merchant in Hamburg, and Garcia de Yllan, his associate in Antwerp. Menasseh likely knew about both these men and could see how royal consent meant a difference for well-being of Jewish subjects, individually or as a community and that new business opportunities might evolve from contacts with the Crown or court of various countries. See David S. Katz, “Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Queen Christina of Sweden, 1651–1655,” Jewish Social Studies, volume 45, no. 1, 1983, pp. 57–72.

  16. 16.

    Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism , 1550–1750, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989), pp. 158–160; by the same author, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement” in Kaplan et al., Mennasseh ben Israel and his World (1989), pp. 137–163.

  17. 17.

    Holly Snyder, “English Markets, Jewish Merchants, and Atlantic Endeavors: Jews and the Making of British Transatlantic Commercial Culture, 1650–1800,” in Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan, Atlantic Diasporas (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2009), pp. 50–74.

  18. 18.

    See Lucien Wolf, “Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth,” in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society in England (TJHSE), 1 (1893–1894), pp. 55–58, 60–66, and, “The First English Jews: Notes on Antonio Fernandez Caravajal, with some Biographical Documents,” in TJHSE, 2 (1894–1895), pp. 14–48; See also Kaplan, An Alternative Path (2000), pp. 155–167.

  19. 19.

    Edward Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean (Anchor Books, New York, 2009), pp. 181–219, speculates that Carvajal had recommended to Cromwell to consider an invasion of Jamaica. The consultations, via Cromwell’s secretary, John Thurloe, were kept secret. Since no historical accounts mention Jamaica for a planned invasion, it was always assumed that Jamaica was an afterthought.

  20. 20.

    For a discussion on endenization , see Chap. 3.

  21. 21.

    H.S.Q. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law (Oxford, 1908), pp. 102–107.

  22. 22.

    Cromwell’s rise to power in 1653 diminished the London merchants’ influence, which gave him the opportunity to make peace with the Dutch. Affairs of state were taken over by the Council of State ruled by Cromwell and his secretary of state, John Thurloe. See T. Birch (ed.), Collection of State Papers of John Thurloe (7 volumes, London, 1742).

  23. 23.

    It is not clear if Dormido had lived in London earlier; see Kaplan, An Alternative Path (2000), p. 157. According to Israel, in Kaplan et al., Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), pp. 154–155, Dormido had been a former Parnas of the Amsterdam Sephardic community in 1645 who later became a founding member of the London Sephardic synagogue and one its first Parnasim. Dormido was likely a relative of Menasseh’s wife, Rachel Abrabanel.

  24. 24.

    “Memoranda Concerning the Resettlement of the Jews in England,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, I, p. 47, and, T. Birch (ed.), Collection of State Papers of John Thurloe, (7 volumes, London, 1742), vol. IV, 61–2, 1655–1656, pp. 60, 161.

  25. 25.

    Kaplan et al., (eds.) Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), p. 155, gives a detailed account of Dormido and his business affairs and losses in Brazil. Dormido’s sons were merchants in Recife in the 1640s in the sugar trade and lost a great deal of money during the planters uprising. He apparently settled in London during the Anglo-Dutch war and requested the help from Cromwell in petitioning King John IV of Portugal for compensation. Dormido’s sons were among those who returned to Amsterdam and then also moved to London in 1654. See also Wolf, Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission (1901), p. XXXV.

  26. 26.

    Israel “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement,” in Kaplan et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), pp. 139–163: p. 156.

  27. 27.

    Wolf, Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission (1901), p. XXX.

  28. 28.

    See Israel, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement,” in Kaplan et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), p. 157, correspondence between Dormido and Nassi.

  29. 29.

    Opening quote in 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 (Hollandse Historische Reeks, the Hague, vol. 24, 1995), pp. 223–243.

  30. 30.

    Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), p. XXX.

  31. 31.

    Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), p. XXXVI.

  32. 32.

    Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), p. XXXVIII.

  33. 33.

    Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), pp. XlIII–LIII.

  34. 34.

    Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), pp. IXV–IXIX.

  35. 35.

    Israel, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement,” in Kaplan et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), p. 153.

  36. 36.

    Lucien Wolf, “Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth,” in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society in England (TJHSE), 1, 1893–1894, pp. 55–58; and by the same author, “The Jewry of the Restoration, 1660–1665,” in TJHSE, 5, 1902–1905.

  37. 37.

    In the Cemetery of the Resettlement (Cemeterio Velho), among members of the Portuguese Nation between 1656 and 1684, only 54 percent of the community were buried there. Of those who had lived in London prior to 1659, only 29 percent were buried in the community graveyard. See Kaplan et.al. (eds.), “The Jewish Profile,” in Kaplan, An Alternative Path (2000), pp. 155–167; p. 160.

  38. 38.

    Kaplan et al. (eds.), An Alternative Path (2000), p. 167. See also, Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002), Chapter 1, “The Resettlement, 1656–1700,” pp. 15–38.

  39. 39.

    Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), pp. lxil–lxxvii; Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), p. 30. Endenization offered trading rights but no other privileges. For instance, Jews born abroad were not allowed to own real estate or transmit property to their heirs and they had to pay higher customs duties than British citizens. Jews born in Britain did not face these restrictions, and there is some reason to believe that Jewish merchants in the Netherland sent their wives to London to give birth in London (Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), p. 37, footnote 59 and 60).

  40. 40.

    Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), pp. 28–29.

  41. 41.

    Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), p. 29.

  42. 42.

    In 1684, there were 414 Sephardic Jewish residents in London. By 1695, the number had increased to 499; see Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), p. 29, footnote 32.

  43. 43.

    Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England (TJHSE) 24, 1975, pp. 38–58. See also, Noah L. Gelfand, “To Live and to Trade: The Status of Sephardi Mercantile Communities in the Atlantic World during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Jane S. Gerber (ed.), The Jews in the Caribbean (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford, Portland, 2014), pp. 45–64.

  44. 44.

    Sugar cultivation was introduced to St. Eustatius but the island offered little prospect of becoming a sugar colony. Its future was in transshipment of sugar and other staples from and supply goods and provisions to the French and British colonies in the Caribbean; see Victor Enthoven, “‘That Abominable Nest of Pirates’: St. Eustatius and the North Americans (1680–1780),” Early American Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2012, pp. 239–301; p. 246. Curacao fullfilled a similar function in the slave and supply trade.

  45. 45.

    Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (Columbia University Press, New York, 1960), p. 130. According to Witnitzer, based on synagogue membership, the Jewish population of Dutch Brazil reached its peak in 1645 at about 1450, about half of the total civilian white population. By 1648, about 720 remained; and at the time of capitulation in 1654, about 600 (150 families) returned to Amsterdam, raising the Sephardic population of Amsterdam to about 1800. In other words, in the mid-1650s, about one-third of the Portuguese Jewish population of Amsterdam were returnees from Brazil.

  46. 46.

    Gordon Merrill, “The role of Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area during the Seventeenth Century,” in Caribbean Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, October, 1964, pp. 32–49; pp. 39, 42–44. See also, Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews, The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1984), p. 22, with reference to the settlement of Jewish refugees from Brazil in Cayenne, a group which later joined the Barbados community. Others went to Suriname and New Zeeland (Essequibo) from where they moved to Barbados and Jamaica.

  47. 47.

    N. Darnell Davis, “Notes on the History of the Jews in Barbados,” in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 18, 1909, p. 130.

  48. 48.

    These were merchants from Hamburg and Gluckstadt and Jews trading in “Barbados tobacco,” in 1647 and 1648, recorded in the General Archives in the Hague (Algemeen Rijks Archief), the Hague, Levantse Handel 264, folio 252. For tobacco trade in Hamburg and Gluckstadt, see Kellenbenz, Sephardim an der Unteren Elbe, p. 162, referred to in Israel, “Menasseh Ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement,” in Kaplan et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), pp. 139–163.

  49. 49.

    See Wilfred S. Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados, 1680,” in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, XIII, 1936, pp. 18.

  50. 50.

    Lucien Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission (1901), XXXVI.

  51. 51.

    Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1655, XI, p. 583, referred to in Samuel Oppenheim, “The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654–1664; Some new matter on the subject,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 18, 1909, pp. 1–91; 16–17.

  52. 52.

    Council Minutes referred to in Davis, “Notes on the History of the Jews in Barbados,” 1909, pp. 129–148; p. 143.

  53. 53.

    See Samuel Oppenheim, “The Early History of the Jews in New York,” in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 18, 1909, pp. 1–91; p. 9 ff.

  54. 54.

    Eustace M. Shilstone , Monumental Inscriptions in the Jewish Synagogue at Bridgetown, Barbados (London 1956); “Introduction to Jewish Monumental Inscription,” xviii. With respect to New Netherland, Menasseh ben Israel had argued that “…in view of the great fortune which they have invested in the Company,…they should be give the right to settle in the new colony.” See Herbert I. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century (Williamsport, PA, 1937), pp. 126–127.

  55. 55.

    See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1655, p. 583. See also Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), Chap. 2: “The Resettlement,” (1656–1700), pp. 24. de Mercado appears to have been a member of the London community as well as a member of the Amsterdam Sephardic congregation. The New Christian community in London had provided Cromwell with political intelligence from abroad (see Lucien Wolf, “Cromwell’s Jewish Intelligencers,” in Cecil Roth and Lucien Wolf (eds.), Essays in Jewish History (Jewish Historical Society of England, 1934), and Cromwell saw the benefit of dispersal of the Sephardic merchant network as part of his Western Design. It is also possible that Cromwell saw the commercial advantages of attracting Jewish capital and enterprise away from the Dutch. See also Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell (1901), pp. xxviii–xxxvii.

  56. 56.

    Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1984), p. 103.

  57. 57.

    Publication of the American Jewish Historical Society, volume 47; see also, Lucien Wolff, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, I, 73; and, Gordon Merrill, “The Role of Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area during the Seventeenth Century,” Caribbean Studies, vol. 4, nr. 3, October 1964, pp. 32–49; pp. 42–46.

  58. 58.

    On July 24, 1661, Daniel Bueno Henriques was granted letters of denization , but in 1677 he and Manuel Martinez Dormido complained that their letters had never been issued. The residence of the former was given as Barbados, and that of the latter as London. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial America and West Indies, 1677–80, p. 201, no. 556. See quote Fortune, Merchants and Trade, pp. 103–104.

  59. 59.

    For a general overview, see Davis, “Notes on the History of the Jews in Barbados,” 1909, pp. 129–148.

  60. 60.

    Fortune, Merchants and Trade (1984), quotes p.104–105; see also Harlow, History of Barbados, 1625–1685 (Oxford, 1926) pp. 262–265; and, Max J. Kohler, “Jewish Activity in American Colonial Commerce,” American Jewish Historical Society Publications, 10, 1902, pp. 47–64.

  61. 61.

    Wilfred S. Samuel, “A Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados in the Year 1680,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 13 (1932–1935), pp. 1–124, republished by Purnell and Sons, London, 1936, pp. 1–125. Samuel counted 54 Jewish heads of household in Bridgetown in the 1679 Census, which emitted 23 heads found in the Hebrew Nation and Highway levies. See Martyn Bowden, “Houses, Inhabitants and Levies: Place for the Sephardic Jews of Bridgetown, Barbados, 1679–1729,” in Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. LVII, 2011, pp. 1–53.

  62. 62.

    See, Karl Watson, “Shifting Identities: Religion, Race, and Creolization among the Sephardi Jews of Barbados, 1654–1900,” in Jane S. Gerber (ed.), The Jews in the Caribbean (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford, Portland, 2014), pp. 195–222.

  63. 63.

    Menasseh ben Israel’s brother Ephraim Soeiro, who was involved in Brazil trade, pulled out and most likely redirected his effort toward other trade prospects in the Caribbean. Records in the National Archives in the Hague provides some evidence in a collection named Levantse Handel, 264, fol. 252, where Judah Toro of Amsterdam is recorded as shipping 25 rolls of Barbados tobacco to Genoa. See footnote 13, in Israel, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement” in Kaplan et al., Menasseh ben Israel and His World (1989), p. 143.

  64. 64.

    The example is borrowed from Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Conflict and opportunity in ‘Europe’s Other Sea’: The Advance of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” in American Jewish History, vol. 72, no. 2, 1982, pp. 212–240; p. 214.

  65. 65.

    Egon Wolff and Freida Wolff, “Mistaken Identities of Signatories of the Congregation Zur Israel, Recife,” In Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 12, no. 1/2, July 1978, pp. 91–107.

  66. 66.

    Arnold Wiznitzer, The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community in the New World (American Jewish Historical Society, New York, 1954). See also, Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (Columbia University Press, New York, 1960).

  67. 67.

    Note some corrections or discrepancies found by Wolff and Wolff, “Mistaken Identities” (1978).

  68. 68.

    It was common as an act of baptism to adopt a Christian first name and the family name of an adopted godfather. Brothers, forced to undergo baptism, often received from their different godfathers new, different family names. Descendants who practiced Judaism often gave their children secret Hebrew first names. Upon returning to the Jewish faith, as many did in Brazil under the rather tolerant regime of the WIC, Hebrew first names and original family names were readopted. See Wiznitzer , The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community (1954), p. 47.

  69. 69.

    Eustace M. Shilstone , Jewish Monumental Inscriptions in Barbados (Jewish Historical Society of England, London, 1956); Burial Register kept by the Jewish Congregation of Bevis Marks, Manuscript # 325, Appendix III in Shilstone’s record book.

  70. 70.

    The records can also be accessed on the website maintained by the Jewish genealogical organization: www.jewishgen.org/cemetery/atl-caribbean/bardabos.html

  71. 71.

    See also Eustace M. Shilstone, Monumental Inscriptions in the Jewish Synagogue at Bridgetown, Barbados with Historical Notes from 1630 (Macmillan, NY, 1988). For a depiction of the significance of the iconography and epitaphs of tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Bridgetown, see Karl Watson, “The Iconography of Tombstones in the Jewish Graveyard, Bridgetown, Barbados,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Vol. 50, December 2004, pp. 195–212.

  72. 72.

    Karl Watson, Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 2004 and 2016.

  73. 73.

    Former Marranos , who had openly embraced Judaism, formed the large majority of the Jewish population in Brazil at the time.

  74. 74.

    Samuel Oppenheim, “The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654–1664: Some New Matter on the Subject,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 18, 1909, pp. 1–91.

  75. 75.

    Witnitzer, The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community in the New World (1954), pp. 141–142.

  76. 76.

    See Israel, “Menasseh Ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement,” in Kaplan et al., Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), pp. 139–163; and, Endelman, The Jews of Britain (2002), Chap. 2, pp. 15–38.

  77. 77.

    Wolff and Wolff, “Mistaken Identities,” pp. 101–102. There is some confusion about Dr. Abraham de Mercado’s whereabouts after he arrives in Barbados. Shilstone only lists David Rapael’s tombstone, and Wolff and Wolff’s “Mistaken Identities” (2002) confirms that Dr. Abraham de Mercado and his wife Ester are buried in Ouderkerk, the Jewish cemetery near Amsterdam, in 1658 (Ester) and 1669 (Abraham).

  78. 78.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados, 1680,” 1936.

  79. 79.

    Emily Hahn, Aboab: First Rabbi of the Americas (Covenant Books, 1959). In 2007, the Machon Yerushalaim (the Jerusalem Institute of Talmudic Research) published a book about Rabbi Fonseca’s works, including a history about the community of Recife. The book is called Chachamei Recife V’Amsterdam, or The Sages of Recife and Amsterdam (2007).

  80. 80.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardic,” 1978, pp. 1–61; p. 38.

  81. 81.

    Jonathan Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic (Brill, Leiden, 2009), p. 506; Abraham Pereyra (also spelled Pereira) established a sugar refinery in 1655 or 1656 with his brother Ishac. They sold the factory in 1664. According to Israel, “The Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement,” in Kaplan et al. (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (1989), pp. 138–163; p. 145, Pereyra had been a patron of Menasseh ben Israel and shared in his messianic ideas. Also, Pereyra had important trading connections with the Caribbean, the likely reason why he had embarked upon a journey to Barbados.

  82. 82.

    Wiznitzer , The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community in the New World (1954), pp. 50–52. The total record consists of 181 names. Of the 114 different surnames listed in the records, 40 surnames are found in Shilstone’s records.

  83. 83.

    Witnitzer, The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community in the New World (1954), pp. 170–177.

  84. 84.

    Wiznitzer, “Personalia,” in Jews in Colonial Brazil, 1960, pp. 169–177.

  85. 85.

    Wiznitzer , Jews in Colonial Brazil (1960), pp. 129–30. Menasseh ben Israel, who was the main rabbi with the congregation of Amsterdam, had made an unsuccessful bid to secure the rabbinical post in Recife, earlier. See his Part II of Conciliador (Amsterdam, 1641), referred to in Yosef Hayin Yerushalmi, “Between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curacao and the Caribbean in Early Modern Jewish History,” American Jewish History, December 1982, vol. 72, nor. 2, pp. 172–211.

  86. 86.

    See the records in Wiznitzer , “Personalia,” in Jews in Colonial Brazil, 1960, p. 172, for Daniel and Salomon Dormido. Why Cromwell extended a helping hand to the Dutch Sephardim to assist in their affairs with losses encountered in Brazil is an interesting question but may have something to do with the fact that England had become Portugal’s major trading partner in northern Europe as hostilities with the Dutch Republic over Brazil had soured the trade relationships between Amsterdam and Lisbon.

  87. 87.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), pp. 57–61, suggests that with the introduction of the commission system (after 1660s) many island merchants lost business from the larger island planters. Many merchants subsequently abandoned trade or left Barbados for the Carolinas and other Caribbean colonies (for instance, Jamaica). After their departure, Sephardic merchants moved in to fill the void.

  88. 88.

    Samuel, “A Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados in the Year, 1680,” 1936.

  89. 89.

    Samuel, “A Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados in the Year 1680,” pp. 94–96.

  90. 90.

    See also Martyn J. Bowden, “Houses, Inhabitants and Levies: Place for the Sephardic Jews of Bridgetown, Barbados 1679–1729,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Vol. 57, December 2011, pp. 1–53; p. 3, with a supplement of 23 more Jewish heads of household. Added to the record are Jews of more modest means and poor residents.

  91. 91.

    Edward Littleton, The Groans of the Plantations (1689).

  92. 92.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados,” pp. 11–12.

  93. 93.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados,” 1936, David de Acosta, planter in St. Thomas, from Spain; David Namias, planter in Christchurch Parish, from Hamburg; Daniel Bueno Enriques, planter in St. Thomas, from Seville, Spain (married to a daughter of de Acosta); Lewis Dias (alias Joseph Jessurun Mendes), merchant in St. Michael, of Portuguese birth; Simon Henrique de Caceres from Gluckstadt (near Hamburg) in Denmark with business in London; Abraham Baruch Henriques, from Amsterdam; Abraham Valverde with Brazil roots, endenized 1696; and Rowland Gideon from Gluckstadt, Denmark. Wolff and Wolff refer to Lewis Dias alias Joseph Jessurun Mendes in “Mistaken Identities,” 1978, pp. 99–101.

  94. 94.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados,” 1936. David Raphael de Mercado, son of Dr. Abraham de Mercado, from Recife, Brazil, via Amsterdam, received endenization papers in 1661; Dr. Moses Hiskia de Mercado, son of Dr. Abraham de Mercado, endenized in 1680 from Hamburg; and Isaac de Mercado, after 1675, from Amsterdam; Simon Henrique de Caceres from Glückstadt (near Hamburg), via London; David Israel, from Brazil via New Netherlands, with family in Amsterdam, endenized in 1662; Antonia Rodriques-Rezio, endenized 1661, from Brazil, via Amsterdam. Moses Israel Pachecho, from Hamburg, endenized in 1662; Moses Pereira de Leon, from Recife, via Guadaloupe, endenization 1671 (with relatives in London and Amsterdam); Abraham de Silva (son of Aaron de Silva, from Brazil, endenized 1661); Abraham de Fonseca (son of Isaac de Fonseca, from Brazil); Solomon Chaves, from Bordeaux, via London; David Chillao and David Velloa, from Pernambuco, Brazil.

  95. 95.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados,” 1936. Simon Mendes, Mordecai Campernell (with roots in Brazil), and Daniel Campernell, all had connections with Rhode Island and had settled in Speightstown. Daniel Campernell had lived in Brazil. Included in the network was Moses Israel Pachecho from Hamburg, endenized in 1662, and Aaron Navarro from a Amsterdam family.

  96. 96.

    Samuel counts 54 Jewish heads of households in the 1679–1680 census, which Martyn Bowden, in Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. LVII, 2011, pp. 1–53, notes emitted 23 heads of households found in the Hebrew Nation and Highway Levies (p. 3).

  97. 97.

    Samuel, “A Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados,” 1936, pp. 36–39; pp. 93–94, derived from Col. Engry Book, vol. vii, p. 3, Public Record Office. In total 523 names appear on the list.

  98. 98.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados,” 1936, pp. 37–38.

  99. 99.

    Wilfred Samuel, “Sir William Davidson, Royalist (1616–1689) and the Jews,” in Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 14 (1935–1939), pp. 39–79; pp. 53–54, refers to Daniel and Abraham Bueno Henriques as connected to Barbados. See also the pedigree of the Bueno Henriques Family in Appendix viii, p. 78.

  100. 100.

    Samuel, “Review of the Jewish Colonies in Barbados,” 1936, pp. 31–32. See also Wilfred S. Samuel, “Sir William Davidson , Royalist (1616–1689), and the Jews,” in Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 14 (1935–1939), pp. 39–79.

  101. 101.

    See Not.Arch. April 1658, 2261B/717, G.A.A. in which Moyses and Aron Navarro are mentioned as creditors in a statement filed by Moyses Nunes at a Notary Public in Amsterdam after returning from Brazil in which he states his losses and provides a list of his debts. Aaron Navarro was the son of an Amsterdam Jew who had settled in Brazil with two of his brothers and returned to Amsterdam after he had lost most of his wealth in Brazil.

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    Yda Schreuder

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Schreuder, Y. (2019). The Mission of Menasseh Ben Israel and Cromwell’s Western Design. 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_5

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