With studies of Jewish communities in port cities ranging from sixteenth century Livorno to modern Singapore, this book develops and extends the concept of the port Jew using a blend of conceptual innovation and original research. The first section explores the world of the Sephardi Jews, revealing patterns of mobility and networks that intertwined commerce, community and kinship. Individual case histories based on Livorno, Amsterdam, Cura ao, Charleston, Liverpool, and Bristol examine how Jewish identity was formed in the unique milieu of the cosmopolitan maritime trading centre, how the...

This is the first biography of the extraordinary, but ordinary life of, Patrick Nelson. His experiences touched on some of the most important and intriguing historical themes of the twentieth century. He was a black migrant to interwar Britain; an aristocrat's valet in rural Wales; a Black queer man in 1930s London; an artist's model; a law student, a recruit to the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and Prisoner of War during the Second World War. Through his return to Jamaica after the war and his re-migrations to London in the late 1940s and the early 1960s, he was also witness to post-war...