Description
Book SynopsisThis book surveys the role of Amsterdam’s Sephardic merchants in the westward expansion of sugar production and trade in the seventeenth-century Atlantic. It offers an historical-geographic perspective, linking Amsterdam as an emerging staple market to a network of merchants of the “Portuguese Nation,” conducting trade from the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil. Examining the “Myth of the Dutch,” the “Sephardic Moment,” and the impact of the British Navigation Acts, Yda Schreuder focuses attention on Barbados and Jamaica and demonstrates how Amsterdam remained Europe’s primary sugar refining center through most of the seventeenth century and how Sephardic merchants played a significant role in sustaining the sugar trade.
Trade Review“This book is clearly a work of love. … It is a well-written, well-documented overview of trade, trade networks, and the intersection of geopolitics during a dynamic century during which the foundations of empire were being laid. … this volume is a very good overview of the different strands at play during this formative time in European colonialism.” (Jessica Vance Roitman, Studia Rosenthaliana, Vol. 47 (1), 2021)
Table of Contents1. The Atlantic Sugar Trade: Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants in the Seventeenth Century2. The Development of the Sephardic Jewish Sugar Trade Newtork3. Dutch Trade and Sephardic Merchants in the Atlantic and British Caribbean World in the Seventeenth Century4. Evidence from Trade Records at the Amsterdam City Archives5. The Mission of Menasseh Ben Israel and the Settlement of Jews in London and Barbados6. Cromwell's Western Design and the Second Barbados: Jamaica7. A True Atlantic Community
