The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World

ISBN-13: 9781107667464 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 280 str.

Peter Mark; Jos Da Silva Horta; Jose Da Silva Horta

Opis

This book traces the history of early seventeenth-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petite Cote. There, they lived as public Jews, under the spiritual guidance of a rabbi sent to them by the newly established Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. In Senegal, the Jews were protected from agents of the Inquisition by local Muslim rulers. The Petite Cote communities included several Jews of mixed Portuguese-African heritage as well as African wives, offspring, and servants. The blade weapons trade was an important part of their commercial activities. These merchants participated marginally in the slave trade but fully in the arms trade, illegally supplying West African markets with swords. This blade weapons trade depended on artisans and merchants based in Morocco, Lisbon, and northern Europe and affected warfare in the Sahel and along the Upper Guinea Coast. After members of these communities moved to the United Provinces around 1620, they had a profound influence on relations between black and white Jews in Amsterdam. The study not only discovers previously unknown Jewish communities but by doing so offers a reinterpretation of the dynamics and processes of identity construction throughout the Atlantic world."

Recenzje

'… meticulously researched … this path-breaking book has persuasively demonstrated the importance of West African Jews for understanding the early modern Atlantic world.' Daniel J. Schroeter, Journal of African History

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Two Sephardic communities on Senegal's Petite Côte; 2. Jewish identity in Senegambia; 3. Religious interaction: Catholics, Jews, and Muslims in early 17th-century Upper Guinea; 4. The blade weapons trade in seventeenth-century West Africa; 5. The Luso-African ivories as historical source for the weapons trade and for the Jewish presence in Guinea of Cape Verde; 6. The later years: merchant mobility and the evolution of identity; Conclusion; Appendix I; Appendix II.