Gentes da Nação

The term "Portuguese Nation" captures the sense of peoplehood shared by inheritors of Iberian Jewish culture in the early modern period. In addition to Western Sephardic Jews living openly in Western Europe and the Caribbean, it included Spanish and Portuguese New Christians across the full spectrum between Catholic sincerity and crypto-Judaism.  This made it a racial-ethnic identity that embraced gentiles and heterodox judaizers at the same time as it excluded Ashkenazim.  With the rise of mercantilism, these "Men of the Nation" spread out across the world and founded complex international trade networks, transcending religious and political boundaries that other groups could not easily cross.

Diasporas within a Diaspora

  • Subtitle:  Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World Maritime Empires (1540-1740)
  • Author:  Jonathan I. Israel
  • Publisher:  Brill, 2006 – 613 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/2002018609
  • Availability:  in print – see publisher's website
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

Jews and Port Cities, 1590-1990

  • 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:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

Atlantic Diasporas

  • Subtitle:  Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800
  • Editors:  Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan
  • Publisher:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009 – 307 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/2008007948
  • Availability:  in print – see publisher's website
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

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

  • 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:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

The Western Sephardim

  • Series:  "The Sephardi Heritage" (Vol. 2)
  • Editor:  Richard D. Barnett
  • Publisher:  Vallentine & Mitchell, 1989 – 532 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/72188435
  • Availability:  out of print and expensive; recommend finding in a library
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents