Description
Book Synopsis 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.
Trade Review “This impressive volume shows that the history of minorities – specifically that of a diaspora – can open up completely new perspectives on the 'great' questions and developments of general history.” • Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
“… this magnificent and much-needed volume … is remarkably free, factual or interpretive.” • American Jewish History
“The age-old tension between value-free history and history with a moral is implicit throughout this fine volume.” • The Jerusalem Report
“A substantial contribution to the scholarship on Indian [Native-American]-European relations … Specialists will find new nuggets to challenge existing interpretations, while readers new to the topic will find useful introductions and more detailed case studies that give some idea of the current issues under scholarly debate. All readers will experience the benefits of looking at one topic comparatively across vast amounts of space and time.” • Itinerario
Table of Contents 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
