The history of Jews in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres is a field of research that is reshaping our understanding of how Jews entered the modern world. These studies show that the utility of Jewish merchants in an era of European expansion was vital to their acculturation and assimilation.

The history of Jews in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres is a field of research that is reshaping our understanding of how Jews entered the modern world. The port Jew has been identified as a social type whose characteristics dramatically pre-figured conscious efforts to modernize Jewish life in 18th-century Europe.