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

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  • Series:  "European Expansion and Global Interaction" (Vol. 2)
  • Editors:  Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering
  • Publisher:  Berghahn Books, 2001 – 567 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/99044924
  • Availability:  in print – see publisher's website

Review

This monumental collection of articles is the print version of a conference that was held at the John Carter Brown Library in the summer of 1997.  The fruit of seven years of research, it brought together a diverse body of colonial Atlantic scholars and encouraged them to “peek over the wall of their academic confinement” to approach Jewish ingress to the New World from the broadest possible lens.

Sephardim participated in the westward expansion of Europe from both sides of the Atlantic, contributing to this effort as New Christians and open Jews.  Perhaps even more than other minority traders like the Huguenots and Armenians, this enabled them to set up trans-oceanic networks with access to the Iberian, Dutch, French, and English empires, using agents who were conversant in both Catholic and Protestant culture.  Taking this as a point of departure, the editors make a powerful argument that Jewish history in the colonial New World must be understood as a dynamic interaction between no less than three continents.



Contents

A Milder Colonization: Jewish Expansion to the New World
     Paolo Bernardini

Biblical History and the Americas
    
James Romm

Knowledge of Discovered Lands among Jews in Europe
     Noah J. Efron

Jewish Scientists and the Origin of Modern Navigation
     Patricia Seed

Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Idea of America
     Benjamin Schmidt

Israel in America: The Wanderings of the Lost Ten Tribes
     David S. Katz

New Christian, Marrano, Jew
     Robert Rowland

Marrano Religiosity in Hispanic America in the 17th c.
     Nathan Wachtel

Crypto-Jews and the Mexican Holy Office in the 17th c.
     Solange Alberro

The Participation of New Christians in the Conquest
     Eva Alexandra Uchmany

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

Marranos and the Inquisition: On the Gold Route in Brazil
     Anita Novinsky

The Inquisition and the Banishment of New Christians to Brazil
     Geraldo Pieroni

The Portuguese Jewish Nation of Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne
     Gérard Nahon
    1


  27


  47


  73


  86


107


125


149


172


186


203


215


242


255
Atlantic Trade and Sephardim Merchants in 18th c. France
     Silvia Marzagalli

Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean French Colonies
     Mordechai Arbell

New Christians/”New Whites” in Saint-Domingue
     John D. Garrigus

The Jews of Dutch America
     Jonathan I. Israel

The Jews in Suriname and Curaçao
     Wim Klooster

An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights
     James Homer Williams

The Synagogues and Cemeteries of New World Jews
    
Rachel Frankel

Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade
     Seymour Drescher

New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade
     James C. Boyajian

New Christians as Sugar Cultivators and Traders
     Ernst Pijning

Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650
     Pieter Emmer

The Jews in British America
     Jonathan D. Sarna

Indicies
268


287


314


335


350


369


394


439


471


485


501


519


532