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Jews and Port Cities, 1590-1990

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  • Subtitle:  Commerce, Community, and Cosmopolitanism
  • Editors:  David Cesarani and Gemma Romain
  • Publisher:  Vallentine Mitchell, 2006 – 318 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/2006296437
  • Availability:  in print – see publisher's website

Review

This is one of the newer contributions to the "port Jewry thesis," which seeks to reframe scholarly treatments of Jewish paths to modernity in light of the experiences of Western European and Atlantic commercial elites.  First articulated by Lois Dubin and David Sorkin in the late 1990s, it has spawned a growing literature that challenges the "Ashkenazification" of Jewish Emancipation historiography.  Instead of focusing on the landlocked centers of 19th century Berlin and Paris, it looks to Sephardim and their far-reaching maritime trade networks a century and more beforehand.

As the discourse has matured, its proponents have begun to debate the outer limits of their scope of inquiry.  That conversation was launched in two academic summits in 2001 and 2003, and the articles in Jews and Port Cities make up the formal written results of the second of these.  Hence, while Atlantic Sephardim retain central billing, the book covers Ashkenazi port cities as well, and it extends over four centuries from the early modern period to our contemporary moment.


Contents

Introduction
     David Cesarani

Reflections on the Study of Port Jews
    
Lois C. Dubin

The Port Jews of Livorno and their Global Networks of Trade
     Francesca Trivellato

Port Jews in Copenhagen
     Thorsten Wagner

Networks and Communication in the Sephardi Diaspora
     Evelyne Oliel-Grausz

Decline of the Sephardi Community in Late 17th c. Hamburg
     Klaus Weber

Identity, Space, and Intercultural Contact in the Urban
Entrepôt
     Adam Sutcliffe

Curaçao’s Sephardim in the Making of a Caribbean Creole
     Linda M. Rupert

The Port Jews of 19th c. Charleston
     Gemma Romain

The Jews of Bristol and Liverpool, 1750-1850
     David Cesarani
    1


  14


  31


  49


  61


  77


  93


109


123


141

The 'Jewish Nation' of Livorno
     Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti

The Port Jews of Corfu and the 'Blood Libel' of 1891
     Sakis Gekas

The Port Jews of Libau, 1880-1914
     Nicholas J. Evans

The Glassgow Waterfront c. 1880-1914
     William Kenefick

Port Jews in Cape Town: Victorian & Edwardian Years
     Milton Shain, Richard Mendelsohn, and Vivian Bickford-Smith

Anglo-America, Port Jews and the Invisible Transmigrant
     Tony Kushner

Hamburg Jewry during the Nazi Period, 1933-45
     Rainer Liedtke


Singapore, Manila, and Harbin: Asian 'Port Jewish' Identity
     Jonathan Goldstein

Conclusion
     Gemma Romain

Abstracts, Notes, and Index
157


171


197


215


235


247


261


271


201


297