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ABSTRACT
Traditional studies of the seventeenth-century Atlantic world often describe it in terms of discreet imperial territories governed by distinct imperial systems. This study joins recent scholarship that has observed how the Atlantic and, more specifically, the Caribbean remained an entangled space rooted in the regional trade of both basic and lucrative commodities. This paper examines how Portuguese Jewish merchants in Curaçao helped facilitate mutually beneficial economic relationships between Spanish and Dutch ports that functioned independently of grander imperial designs. These relationships reveal that Portuguese Jewish, Spanish Catholic, and Dutch Protestant actors in the Caribbean could be flexible in their attitudes towards religious ‘others.’ The transfer of both goods and people (free and enslaved) across imperial borders in the Caribbean thus relied on a culture of pragmatic tolerance (but not necessarily acceptance) adopted by such diverse actors as Spanish and Dutch governors,asiento factors, and local and foreign merchants.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for insightful comments on this paper from Ida Altman, David Wheat, Nina Caputo, and two anonymous readers, along with those from participants in a session at the 2020 CLAH annual meeting on an earlier version of this article. Research was supported by a 2019–2020 Fulbright Open Study/Research grant in Spain.
Notes
1 Hamelberg Citation1909, 2:102–4, doc. 78: Extract uit: Journal of Dagh Register van het gene mij ondergeschr is gepasseert in mijn Laaste voijagie van Curacao near de Kuste van Cartagena etca. Anno 1699 (Lias West-Indië).
2 For the asiento system in Habsburg Spain, see Thompson Citation1976; Boyajian Citation1983. For the slave trade asiento, specifically, see Vila Vilar Citation1977; Newson and Minchin Citation2007.
3 It is difficult to trace the provenance of Gaspar de Andrade’s family but considering that the Cacheu Company, run by Lisbon’s merchant elite, administered the asiento it is possible that he was a member of the Lisbon Andrade family, who, in the 1630s, served as bankers for the Habsburg Crown and also had correspondents in Antwerp, Venice, Goa, and throughout Spanish America. For this family, see Boyajian Citation1983, 33, 51–53, 83–85, Appendix A-12; Emmanuel Citation1957, 200–2.
4 Archivo Histórico Nacional [Madrid, Spain] (hereafter AHN) Inquisición 1619, Exp.7, Proceso criminal de Miguel Iriarte contra Felipe Enriquez y el doctor Horst 1700, 2 Bloques, 18 fols. See also Emmanuel and Emmanuel Citation1970, 1:82–83; Weinstein Citation1993, 132–37. Hamelberg Citation1909, 104, doc. 78, contains a notarial record from the Old Curaçao Archive (not. Willem Heldewier, Protocol 1722) recording David Senior and Phelippe Henriques’s registration as factors in Curaçao ‘for the introduction of Blacks by the Company of Guinea [i.e. the Cacheu Company] located in the domain of the King of Portugal’ and noting that both brothers ‘had served His Catholic Majesty more than once.’
5 For the extent of the slave trade in the Americas, see Postma Citation1990; Klein Citation2010; Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat Citation2020.
6 For an analysis of the general transition of foreign merchant communities and related institutions from the southern to the northern Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century, see Gelderblom Citation2013, 121–39.
7 We have no accurate numbers for New Christians within Portuguese society and abroad. This is due to the extent to which those categorized as ‘New Christians’ were able to integrate into mainstream society, and the impossibility of differentiating those who clandestinely maintained ‘crypto-Jewish’ practices, even when marrying into ‘Old Christian’ families, from those who completely integrated into Catholic society. The classic work on this is Azevedo Citation1975. See also the introduction of Novinsky Citation1972, and for more modern treatments, Rowland Citation2001; Bodian Citation1994 and 2007; Feitler Citation2011.
8 For a fuller survey of these migrations, see Swetschinski Citation2000, 54–101.
9 Jonathan Ray convincingly argues that the notion of ‘Sephardi Judaism’ emerged in the sixteenth century and that a distinct Sephardic identity only developed in the Mediterranean gradually over the course of the early modern period. Prior to 1492, those Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal more commonly identified based on local or regional identities, such as Valencian or Catalan; see Ray Citation2013.
10 Portuguese Jewish religious leaders often published exegetical or polemical treatises and commentaries in Portuguese and Spanish with a New Christian audience in mind, such as Mortera 1659–1660 [1988] (later translated into Spanish and expanded by Moses Rephael d’Aguilar); Orobio de Castro Citation1668–Citation1675; and Aboab da Fonseca Citation1680–Citation1681. The famed rabbi Menasseh ben Israel’s 1652 treatise that convinced the English Parliament to allow Jews to resettle in England doubled as a philosophical study of the place of Jewish history in the Atlantic world, with most of his cases being drawn from his own Portuguese experience; see Menasseh ben Israel Citation1987.
11 The phrases ‘nação portuguesa e castelhana,’ ‘nação hebrea portugueses e os castelhanos’ or ‘judeus de nação portuguesa e castelhana’ were used interchangeably. An example of this can be seen in the preamble of the Dotar charter in the Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsarchief [Amsterdam, Netherlands], No. 344 (Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Community Archives) (hereafter SAA 334), Santa Companhia de Dotar, 1141 Termos A, 1615-1622, f. 1v. Pulido Serrano (Citation2011, 142–48) discusses Spanish attribution of this identity to Portuguese in Spain, who settled there in large numbers during the Union of the Iberian Crowns (1580–1640).
12 For more on Portuguese Jewish attitudes towards New Christians, see Kaplan Citation1994. For Portuguese Jewish proselytizing among New Christians in France, see Wilke Citation2019. For the same in Venezuela, see Hamm Citation2021; and the Viceroyalty of Peru, Studnicki-Gizbert Citation2007, 72.
13 On the term ‘New Jews,’ see Kaplan Citation1994.
14 Escamoth is plural with ascama or escama being its singular form in the Lusofied Hebrew used in the records. Although the Portuguese adopted some Hebrew words into their written records, all accords were written in contemporary seventeenth- or eighteenth-century Portuguese and occasionally Spanish (and even more rare, in Dutch), as were most other written documents of the community into at least the mid-eighteenth century. The merger agreement of the Talmud Torah community that united the three Portuguese Jewish congregations of Amsterdam in 1639 and the accords that were based on the agreement can be found in SAA 334 No.19, Livro dos acordos da da nação, ff. 77–88, 106–11. For the accords of the Sur Israel community of Recife, in Dutch Pernambuco, see SAA 334 1304 Ascamoth 5409 (1648), ff. 3–8. The London escamoth were published in Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation (London, England), Ascamot; or, Laws and regulations of the Congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, entitled [Sha’ar ha-shamayim (romanized form)] (London: E. Varty, 1850). An English translation of the accords of Mikvé Israel in Curaçao can be found in Emmanuel and Emmanuel Citation1970, 2:541–617.
15 For the desire to maintain a positive image, see Bodian Citation1997, 53–75; Kaplan Citation2002. On the oscillating treatment of Jews, see Chazan Citation2012.
16 For an examination of how foreign merchant communities were forced to form confessional religious communities to retain their autonomy in late-sixteenth century Amsterdam, see Oscar Gelderblom Citation2013, 121–22.
17 Cavallo Citation2009; Pérez García Citation2014; Pulido Serrano Citation2006. For ‘lands of idolatry,’ see Kaplan Citation1985, 197.
18 Bodian Citation1988; Roitman Citation2005. This was different from the marriages of New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula, which were homogeneous but not necessarily endogamous and often involved intermarriage with Old Christians; see Pulido Serrano Citation2011, 141–42.
19 Considering that only those belonging to the ‘Portuguese and Spanish Nation,’ i.e., those with converso roots, could become members, Sephardim without converso roots could become marginalized, such as the group of Sephardi migrants from Belgrade and other parts of the Balkans in 1689; see Levie Bernfeld Citation2018.
20 The lowest amount an individual could receive was 240 guilders, which equaled about 120 pesos, while the highest could reach 600 guilders, or about 300 pesos; see Bodian Citation1988, 63; Roitman Citation2005, 363. In comparison, the annual salary of the military commander on Curaçao in 1645 was 60 guilders, about 30 pesos; see Hamelberg Citation1909, doc. 42, pp. 58–66, Extracten uit de Vergadering van XIX, (Loketkast, No. 17).
21 For the ambiguous notion of the ‘Law of Moses’ and its role in the New Jewish community, see Bodian Citation1997, 96–110.
22 The inability of non-elites tied to the community to speak Dutch, including people who weren’t Jewish, would have made it difficult for them to search for employment elsewhere. See, for example, the case of Maria d’Avila, former morisca slave of Francisco Gomes Henriques (alias Benjamin Israel), who after being manumitted on 26 October 1610 remained in his service at an annual salary of 24 guilders. She transferred to the household of another Portuguese Jew, the ‘widow of Josef Franco,’ on 22 January 1621; SAA Inventaris van het Archief van de Notarissen ter Standplaats Amsterdam 645B, Not. Sibrant Cornelisz 21 & 22 Jan 1621, 1204–1205, 1205–1206; Koen et al. Citation1984, 164.
23 The most emblematic are Kaplan Citation1994; Bodian Citation1997; Swetschinski Citation2000, Graizbord Citation2004; Wilke Citation2018. Older works include those of Cecil Roth Citation1932; Révah Citation1959; Nahon Citation1977; Yerushalmi Citation1981.
24 Hamelberg Citation1909, 102–4, doc. 78: documentation proving Jewish birth was used by Jewish sailors in this way to the extent that at the start of the eighteenth century a registry called the Livro de Circuncisiones was kept in Curaçao that functioned in the same manner as baptismal records to prove that one had been circumcised eight days after birth, signifying a Jewish birth and thus avoiding arrest by the Inquisition in the case of capture by a Spanish vessel; see Emmanuel and Emmanuel Citation1970, 97.
25 AHN Inquisición 1618, Exp. 11, Proceso criminal contra Juan Díaz Pimienta, bloque 4.
26 Schmitt Citation2019. Cornelis Goslinga called this trade the klein vaart as opposed to the formal groot vaart. This distinction between the ‘small’ and ‘large’ trade of the Dutch Atlantic oversimplifies the importance of informal trade, i.e., the klein vaart only existed as such from the perspective of Amsterdam and the WIC: see Goslinga Citation1971, 169–230. On informal trade’s importance to the Dutch Caribbean, see Klooster Citation1998; Rupert Citation2012.
27 AHN Inquisición 1618, Exp.11, bloques 3 and 4.
28 Archivo General de Indias [Seville, Spain] (hereafter AGI) Contaduria 239, Real Cédula de 20 Agosto 1656.
29 AGI Indiferente 1668, ff. 583r–84v and 679r–80v; see also García-Montón Citation2019.
30 AGI Contaduría 239, N. 2, Reales Cédulas de indultos y perdones concedidos a las personas que sin licencia comerciaron en las Indias, y de otros delitos y causas, 1601/1728.
31 Sections of Phelippe’s trial in the Inquisition archives are lost but Phelippe reported them in a letter to Governor Bernagie and the West India Company which is preserved and transcribed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek van Nederland [The Hague] (hereafter KB) Hamelberg Collection, Manuscript no.120-B-10: XVI-E, and discussed in Weinstein Citation1993, 135–36. See also Emmanuel and Emmanuel Citation1970, 82–83.
32 KB, Hamelberg Citation1909, no. 120-B-10: XVI-E; see also Weinstein Citation1993, 134–35.
33 AHN, Inquisición 1618, Exp.11, bloque 4, ff. 7r–8r.
34 KB, Hamelberg Citation1909, no. 120-B-10:XVI-E; see also Weinstein Citation1993, 135–36.
35 AHN Inquisición 1618, Exp. 11, bloque 7, ff. 2r–6v.
36 AGI Escribanía, 297B, Comisiones del distrito de la gobernación de Veracruz, 6 piezas, ff. 1r–845r.
37 See his will of 1723 located in Nationaal Archief [The Hague, Netherlands] (hereafter NAN), OWIC, V. Secretariele en Notariele Protocollen, 1545.
38 For a contemporary printed text of the Dutch-Spanish treaty, see Aitzema Citation1669, accessed through the Hugens Institute for the History of the Netherlands digitized collection.
39 Even though anti-Jewish sentiments in Madrid opposed the idea of a Jew representing his ‘Catholic Majesty,’ the equivalent position of residente eventually went to Manuel Belmonte in 1679; see Herrero Sánchez Citation2016, 457, 463.
40 The excuse of forced arrival had been used since the sixteenth century; see Navarrete Peláez Citation2007, 173–81.
41 After the fall of Dutch Brazil in 1654, for example, the Patenta Onrossa did not extend to the small group of Portuguese Jewish refugees who had landed in New Amsterdam, while the later Jewish settlers on Curaçao had to ask the Amsterdam Mahamad to reaffirm the rights they had enjoyed in Brazil with the States General: see Yerushalmi Citation1982, 172–92; Swetschinski Citation1982, 212–40.
42 AHN Inquisición 1618, Exp. 11, bloque 7, ff. 2r–6v, 7r–8v.
43 He arrived in Veracruz around September of 1686 and left in January 1687, AGI Escribanía 297B, ff. 82r, 92r–114v.
44 This was governor Juan Pando de Estrada. The Crown replied positively to his request for soldiers and arms in a royal cédula dated 27 August 1685 where it also committed to sending provisions to the viceroy in Lima, AGI, Santa Fe, 993, L.1, Registro de Oficio: Cartagena, ff. 40v–42r.
45 AGI Contratación 2896, R.1 Registros de Esclavos: 1639–1686, ff. 806r–26r.
46 On changing Spanish attitudes towards Portuguese in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Caribbean, see Hamm Citation2016. For the same in the South Atlantic during the Iberian Union (1580–1640) period, see Schwartz Citation1968.
47 AGI Escribanía 297B, Pieza 2, ff. 81r–122v.
48 Belle Citation1689a, 1:115.
49 AGI Contratación 2896, R.1, ff. 822v–26r.
50 AGI Contratación 2896, R.1, ff. 822v–26r.
51 All three were involved in the slave trade and were commercially connected to Gonzalo’s brother in Antwerp, García de Yllan Barraza, a royal asentista; see Klooster Citation2009b, 43. For Portuguese slave traders in Cartagena more broadly, see Vila Vilar Citation1977.
52 Belle Citation1689b, 2:44, 97–98, 119–20.
53 For the sale of slaves in Cartagena during the summer and early autumn months for the purposes of transshipment to Peru, see Newson and Minchin Citation2007, 16.
54 On the Portuguese language’s contributions to the development of Papiamentu, Curaçao’s creole language, see Rupert Citation2012, 103–62.
55 Robles Citation1980. I would like to thank Mijael Obando Belard Silvano for bringing this source to my attention.
56 NAN, OAC, V Secretaruêle en notariêle protocollen, 1708–1828, inv. nrs 799, no. 204 David Bernal 1728. The original document is in poor condition but is discussed in Emmanuel Citation1957, 247–50.
57 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo [Lisbon, Portugal], Tribunal do Santo Ofício-Inquisição de Lisboa, 28, 1292, Processo de Francisco Nunes de Miranda, ff. 1–66. I would like to thank Thiago Krause of UNIRIO for bringing this processo to my attention.
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Oren Okhovat
Oren Okhovat is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Florida; he received his MA in Latin America and Caribbean Studies from Florida International University. His dissertation examines how the Portuguese Jewish communities of the seventeenth-century Dutch Atlantic world functioned as Portuguese merchant settlements. His research has been supported by a Fulbright in Spain, a Rothman Doctoral Fellowship in Curaçao, and an American Academy for Jewish Research grant for work with digitized Dutch records.