Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T16:51:10.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economics, Empire, Eschatology: The Global Context of Jewish Settlement in the Americas, 1650–70

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

Jessica Vance Roitman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Dutch and English offered Spanish and Portuguese Jews inducements such as liberties unheard of in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century in order to lure them to their New World colonies. As compelling as the economic and military rationales for Jewish settlement were, there were also “spiritual” reasons to encourage Jewish settlement – and for Jews, themselves, to venture to the colonies. The mid-seventeenth century was a time of eschatological fervor in both Christian and the Jewish communities and millenarianism and messianism formed the backdrops against which Jewish colonization in the New World occurred. The seventeenth century saw an increasingly acute expectation of apocalyptic events by Christians and Jews, and was marked by an outpouring of messianic prophecy all over Europe and the Mediterranean. This article will discuss whether the English and/or the Dutch encouraged Jewish settlement in the New World with the idea that it could help in ushering in the much yearned for second coming. It will also discuss whether Jews may have been tempted to go to the colonies with the idea that they were helping to bring about the dispersion described in Daniel 12:7 – a scattering that was necessary before the prophesized “Second Coming”.

Keywords

JewsGuyanasEarly ModernEschatologyColonization
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 40 , Special Issue 2: Spiritual Geopolitics in the Early Modern World , August 2016 , pp. 293 - 310
Copyright
© 2016 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jessica Vance Roitman is a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and a Lecturer at Leiden University. She works on diverse topics, including Jewish history, Early Modern (Atlantic) history, slavery, migration, and the formation of identities.

References

Bibliography

(Published) Primary Sources Google Scholar
BritishLibraryGoogle Scholar
Egerton MS. No. 2,395, fol. 46.Google Scholar
National Archives of the Netherlands, The HagueGoogle Scholar
Collectie Aitzema, 1584–1669, 1.10.02, inv. nr. 66–67.Google Scholar
Staten-Generaal, 1.01.02, inv. nr. 5751, Groot placaet-boeck, vervattende de placaten, ordonnantien ende edicten van de Staten Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden, ende van de Staten van Hollandt en West-Vrieslandt, mitsgaders vande Staten van Zeelandt edited by C. Cau. 9 volumes. ’s-Gravenhage, 1664. vol. 2.Google Scholar
National Library of the Netherlands, The HagueGoogle Scholar
Een vertoogh van de considerabele colonie, by de [...] Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt, uytgeset op de vaste kust van America. ’s Gravenhage, 1676. Pamphlet number 11388.Google Scholar
Accord van Brasilien, Mede van ‘t Recif, Maurits-Stadt ende de omleggende Forten van Brasil. Amsterdam, 1654.Google Scholar
Groot placaet-boeck. The Hague, 1770.Google Scholar
http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/files/5913/8016/5529/Correspondence_1647–1653.pdf.Google Scholar
http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/files/5313/6082/3614/Curacao_Transcription.pdf.Google Scholar
Sainsbury, W. Noel. ed. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1661–1668. London, 1880.Google Scholar
Sainsbury, W. Noel. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, 1675–1676. London, 1893.Google Scholar
Thorowgood, Thomas. Jews in America, or, Probabilities, that those Indians are Judaical, made more probable by some additionals to the former conjectures An accurate discourse is premised of Mr. John Elliot, (who first preached the Gospel to the natives in their own language) touching their origination, and his vindication of the planters. London, 1660.Google Scholar
Warren, George. An Impartial Description of Surinam upon the continent of Guiana in America. 1667.Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Arbell, Mordechai. The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2003.Google Scholar
Balletti, A. Gli Ebrei e gli Estensi. Modena: Società tipografica modenese, 1913.Google Scholar
Ben-Ur, Aviva. “Purim in the Public Eye: Leisure, Violence, and Cultural Convergence in the Dutch Atlantic.” Jewish Social Studies 20:1 (2013): 32–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Ur, Aviva, and Roitman, Jessica Vance. “Adultery Here and There: Crossing Sexual Boundaries in the Dutch Jewish Atlantic.” In Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680–1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders, edited by Gert Oostindie and Jessica Vance Roitman, 185–223. Leiden: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Boer, Harm den, and Israel, Jonathan. “William III in the Eyes of Amsterdam Sephardi Writers: The Reactions of Miguel de Barrios, José Penso Vega and Manuel de León.” In The Anglo-Dutch Moment. Essays on the Glorious Revolution and Its World Impact, edited by Jonathan I. Israel, 439–446. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Cahen, Abraham. “Les Juifs de la Martinique au XVII siècle.” Revue des Etudes Juives 2 (1881): 93–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, J. C. “Cromwell’s Religion.” In Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, edited by John Morrill, chapter 7. London: Longman, 1990.Google Scholar
Davis, J. C. Oliver Cromwell. London: Edward Arnald, 2001.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Judges, Masters, Diviners: Slaves’ Experience of Criminal Justice in Colonial Suriname.” Law and History Review 29:4 (2011): 925–984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Physicians, Healers, and their Remedies in Colonial Suriname.” CBMH/BCHM 33:1 (2016): 3–34.Google ScholarPubMed
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Regaining Jerusalem: Eschatology and Slavery in Jewish Colonization in Seventeenth-Century Suriname.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 3:1 (2016): 11–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fatah-Black, Karwan. White Lies and Black Markets: Evading Metropolitan Authority in Colonial Suriname, 1650–1800. Leiden: Brill, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Games, Alison. “Cohabitation, Suriname-Style: English Inhabitants in Dutch Suriname after 1667.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser.72:1 (2015): 195–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottheil, Richard. “Contributions to the History of the Jews in Surinam.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 9 (1901): 129–146.Google Scholar
Israel, J. I. Conflicts of Empires: Spain, the Low Countries, and the Struggle for World Supremacy, 1585–1713. London: Bloomsbury, 1997.Google Scholar
James, Susan. Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, David S. Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Klooster, Wim. “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s.” In Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500–1800, edited by Richard Kagan and Philip D. Morgan, 31–49. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Lucian, Wolf, ed., Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell: Being a Reprint of the Pamphlets Published by Menasseh ben Israel to Promote the Re-admission of the Jews to England 1649–1656. London, 1901.Google Scholar
MacPherson, David. Annals of Commerce vol. 2. London, 1805.Google Scholar
Myst, Gerardus de. Verloren Arbeyt ofte klaar en kortbondigh vertoogh van de colonie in de landstreke Guiana aan de vaste kuste van America. Amsterdam, 1677.Google Scholar
Netscher, P. M. Geschiedenis van de koloniën Essequebo, Demerary en Berbice, van de vestiging der Nederlanders aldaar tot op onzen tijd. ’s-Gravenhage, 1888.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, Samuel. “An Early Jewish Colony in Western Guiana, 1658–1666: And its Relation to the Jews in Surinam, Cayenne and Tobago.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 16 (1907): 95–186.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, Samuel. “The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654–1664: Some New Matter on the Subject.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 18 (1909): 1–96.Google Scholar
Roitman, Jessica Vance. “Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics.” Itinerario 36:2 (2012): 55–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roitman, Jessica Vance. “Portuguese Jews, Amerindians, and the Frontiers of Encounter in Colonial Suriname.” New West Indian Guide 88 (2014): 18–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roper, L. H., and Van Ruymbeke, B., eds. Constructing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500–1750. Leiden: Brill, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schorsch, Ismar. “From Messianism to Realpolitik: Menasseh Ben Israel and the Readmission of the Jews to England.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978): 187–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tels-Elias, L. J. “De Resolutie van de Staten van Holland van 12 Juli 1657 en de Civiele Status van de Nederlandse Joden.” Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Genootschap voor de Joodsche Wetenschap in Nederland 7 (1960): 56–57.Google Scholar
Watt, Thomas, and Rodway, James. Chronological History of the Discovery and Settlement of Guiana, 1493–1668. Georgetown: Royal Gazette, 1888.Google Scholar
Zijlstra, Suze. Anglo-Dutch Suriname: Ethnic Interaction and Colonial Transition in the Caribbean, 1651–1682, PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2015.Google Scholar
Zijlstra, Suze. “Competing for European Settlers: Local Loyalties of Colonial Governments in Suriname and Jamaica, 1660–1680.” Journal of Early American History 4 (2014): 149–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwarts, Jacob. “Een Episode Uit de Joodsche Kolonisatie van Guyana (1660).” De West-Indische Gids 9 (1927–28): 519–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar