- The following passages are from Dr. Raphael's
book Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New
York: Behrman House, Inc., Pub, 1983), pp. 14, 23-25.
-
- "Jews also took an active part in
the Dutch colonial slave trade; indeed, the bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia
congregations (1648) included an imposta (Jewish tax) of five soldos for
each Negro slave a Brazilian Jew purchased from the West Indies Company.
Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. In Curacao
in the seventeenth century, as well as in the British colonies of Barbados
and Jamaica in the eighteenth century, Jewish merchants played a major
role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether
French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated.
-
- "This was no less true on the North
American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated
in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies
and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England
and converted into rum for sale in Africa. Isaac Da Costa of Charleston
in the 1750's, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760's, and Aaron Lopez
of Newport in the late 1760's and early 1770's dominated Jewish slave trading
on the American continent."
-
- Dr. Raphael discusses the central role
of the Jews in the New World commerce and the African slave trade (pp.
23-25):
-
- SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
JEWISH INTER-ISLAND TRADE: CURACAO, 1656
-
- During the sixteenth century, exiled
from their Spanish homeland and hard-pressed to escape the clutches of
the Inquisition, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands; the
Dutch enthusiastically welcomed these talented, skilled husinessmen.
-
- While thriving in Amsterdam - where they
became the hub of a unique urban Jewish universe and attained status that
anticipated Jewish emancipation in the West by over a century - they began
in the 1500's and 1600's to establish themselves in the Dutch and English
colonies in the New World. These included Curacao, Surinam, Recife, and
New Amsterdam (Dutch) as well as Barbados, Jamaica, Newport, and Savannah
(English).
-
- In these European outposts the Jews,
with their years of mercantile experience and networks of friends and family
providing market reports of great use, played a significant role in the
merchant capitalism, commercial revolution, and territorial expansion that
developed the New World and established the colonial economies. The Jewish-Caribbean
nexus provided Jews with the opportunity to claim a disproportionate influence
in seventeenth and eighteenth century New World commerce, and enabled West
Indian Jewry-far outnumbering its coreligionists further north-to enjoy
a centrality which North American Jewry would not achieve for a long time
to come.
-
- Groups of Jews began to arrive in Surinam
in the middle of the seven-teenth century, after the Portuguese regained
control of northern Brazil. By 1694, twenty-seven years after the British
had surrendered Surinam to the Dutch, there were about 100 Jewish families
and fifty single Jews there, or about 570 persons. They possessed more
than forty estates and 9,000 slaves, contributed 25,905 pounds of sugar
as a gift for the building of a hospital, and carried on an active trade
with Newport and other colonial ports. By 1730, Jews owned 115 plantations
and were a large part of a sugar export business which sent out 21,680,000
pounds of sugar to European and New World markets in 1730 alone.
-
- Slave trading was a major feature of
Jewish economic life in Surinam which as a major stopping-off point in
the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key
role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the
ten largest Jewish purchasers (10,400 guilders) spent more than 25 percent
of the total funds (38,605 guilders) exchanged.
-
- Jewish economic life in the Dutch West
Indies, as in the North American colonies, consisted primarily of mercantile
communities, with large inequities in the distribution of wealth. Most
Jews were shopkeepers, middlemen, or petty merchants who received encouragement
and support from Dutch authorities. In Curacao, for example, Jewish communal
life began after the Portuguese victory in 1654.
-
- In 1656, the community founded a congregation,
and in the early 1670's brought its first rabbi to the island. Curacao,
with its large natural harbor, was the steppng-stone to the other Caribbean
islands and thus ideally suited geographically for commerce.
-
- The Jews were the recipients of favorable
charters containing generous economic privileges granted by the Dutch West
Indies Company in Amsterdam. The economic life of the Jewish community
of Curacao revolved around ownership of sugar plantations and marketing
of sugar, the importing of manufactured goods, and a heavy involvement
in the slave trade, within a decade of their arrival, Jews owned 80 percent
of the Curacao plantations. The strength of the Jewish trade lay in connections
in Western Europe as well as ownership of the ships used in commerce. While
Jews carried on an active trade with French and English colonies in the
Caribbean, their principal market was the Spanish Main (today Venezuela
and Colombia).
-
- Extant tax lists give us a glimpse of
their dominance. Of the eighteen wealthiest Jews in the 1702 and 1707 tax
lists, nine either owned a ship or had at least a share in a vessel. By
1721 a letter to the Amsterdam Jewish community claimed that "nearly
all the navigation...was in the hands of the Jews."' Yet another indication
of the economic success of Curacao's Jews is the fact that in 1707 the
island's 377 residents were assessed by the Governor and his Council a
total of 4,002 pesos; 104 Jews, or 27.6 percent of the taxpayers, contributed
1,380 pesos, or 34.5 percent of the entire amount assessed.
-
- In the British West Indies, two 1680
tax lists survive, both from Barbados; they, too, provide useful information
about Jewish economic life. In Bridgetown itself, out of a total of 404
households, 54 households or 300 persons were Jewish, 240 of them living
in "ye Towne of S. Michael ye Bridge Town." Contrary to most
impressions, "many, indeed, most of them, were very poor." There
were only a few planters, and most Jews were not naturalized or endenizened
(and thus could not import goods or pursue debtors in court). But for merchants
holding letters of endenization, opportunities were not lacking. Barbados
sugar-and its by-products rum and molasses-were in great demand, and in
addition to playing a role in its export, Jewish merchants were active
in the import trade.
-
- Forty-five Jewish households were taxed
in Barbados in 1680, and more than half of them contributed only 11.7 percent
of the total sum raised. While the richest five gave almost half the Jewish
total, they were but 11.1 percent of the taxable population. The tax list
of 1679-80 shows a similar picture; of fifty-one householders, nineteen
(37.2 percent) gave less than one-tenth of the total, while the four richest
merchants gave almost one-third of the total.
-
- An interesting record of interisland
trade involving a Jewish merchant and the islands of Barbados and Curacao
comes from correspondence of 1656. It reminds us that sometimes the commercial
trips were not well planned and that Jewish captains - who frequently acted
as commercial agents as well - would decide where to sell their cargo,
at what price, and what goods to bring back on the return trip.
-
- (End of excerpt)
-
-
- Tony Martin is African studies professor
at Wellesley College and has taught at Wellesley College, Massachusetts
since 1973. He was tenured in 1975 and has been a full professor of African
Studies since 1979. Prior to coming to Wellesley he taught at the University
of Michigan-Flint, the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad) and St. Mary's
College (Trinidad). He has been a visiting professor at the University
of Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University and The Colorado College.
He also spent a year as an honorary research fellow at the University of
the West Indies, Trinidad.
-
- Professor Martin has authored or compiled
or edited eleven books, including Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts
and the Harlem Renaissance, and the classic study of the Garvey Movement,
Race First: the Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey
and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.. His most recent book
is The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront. Martin
qualified as a barrister-at-law at the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn
(London) in 1965, did a B. Sc. honours degree in economics at the University
of Hull (England) and the M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Michigan State University.
-
- Martin's articles and reviews have appeared
in the Journal of Negro History, American Historical Review, African Studies
Review, Washington Post Book World, Journal of Caribbean History, Journal
of American History, Black Books Bulletin, Science and Society, Jamaica
Journal and many other places. His work is to be found in several anthologies
and encyclopedias. He has received a number of academic and community awards.
-
- Martin is well known as a lecturer in
many countries. He has spoken to university and general audiences all over
the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and England, and also in Africa,
Australia, Bermuda and South America. In 1990 he delivered the annual DuBois/Padmore/Nkrumah
lectures in Ghana.
-
- Professor Martin is currently working
on biographies of three Caribbean women - Amy Ashwood Garvey, Audrey Jeffers
and Trinidad's Kathleen Davis ("Auntie Kay"). He is also nearing
completion of a study of European Jewish immigration into Trinidad in the
1930s.
-
-
- The Jewish Onslaught
- Despatches From The Wellesley Battlefront
- By Tony Martin
-
- "...a polemic of the highest order...
the best example of an African answering critics since David Walker's Appeal
to the Colored Citizens of the World." - Molefi Asante, Journal Of
Black Studies
-
- "Professor Martin at long last deals
with the Henry Gates/Cornel West attacks on Afrocentricity.... Martin provides
a solid analysis of the historical use of Blacks by whites to discredit
original Black thought deemed unacceptable by non-Blacks....
-
- "I compare The Jewish Onslaught
to the classic third chapter of DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk entitled
'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others....' Martin has written a book
that years from now will be considered a classic.... It is simply a must
reading on a controversial subject that needs greater airing than some
of the more timid political attempts of recent years." - Raymond
Winbush, The Voice Of Black Studies
-
- " Tony Martin has been forced to
delve into the relationship between the Jews and Blacks and in the process,
he has distilled a work that is informative, fascinating and one which
will heighten the consciousness of Black people everywhere." - Carl
Wint, The Sunday Gleaner
-
- #1 Bestseller
- (Your Black Books Guide)
-
- Best Book Of The Year
- (Black Literary Awards, 1994)
- 1993. vii+137pp. ISBN 0-912469-30-7.
-
- Subject: Who owned the slaving ships?
-
-
-
- Name Of Slave Ships And Their Owners:
-
- The 'Abigail-Caracoa' - Aaron Lopez,
Moses Levy, Jacob Crown
- Isaac Levy and Nathan Simpson
-
- The'Nassau' - Moses Levy
-
- The 'Four Sisters' - Moses Levy
-
- The 'Anne' & The 'Eliza' - Justus
Bosch and John Abrams
-
- The 'Prudent Betty' - Henry Cruger and
Jacob Phoenix
-
- The 'Hester' - Mordecai and David Gomez
-
- The 'Elizabeth' - Mordecai and David
Gomez
-
- The 'Antigua' - Nathan Marston and Abram
Lyell
-
- The 'Betsy' - Wm. De Woolf
-
- The 'Polly' - James De Woolf
-
- The 'White Horse' - Jan de Sweevts
-
- The 'Expedition' - John and Jacob Roosevelt
-
- The 'Charlotte' - Moses and Sam Levy
and Jacob Franks
-
- The 'Franks' - Moses and Sam Levy
-
-
- A video, "The Jewish Role in the
Black Slave Trade," a speech by Prof. Tony Martin with an introduction
by Hoffman, remains online at Google, as of this writing. Viewers who wish
to see it before it, too is censored by Google, can access it here:
-
- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3435039175602962781
|
