Jews and New Christians in the Making of the Atlantic World in the 16th–17th Centuries : A Survey

In Jews and New Christians in the Making of the Atlantic World in the 16th–17th Centuries: A Survey , Henryk Szlajfer describes the ways New Christians and Jews contributed to the rise of the Atlantic economy by developing non-corporate world-wide trade networks, their involvement in the New World sugar plantations, and the role they played until mid-17th century in the slave trade. He argues that persecutions of New Christians by the Inquisition were a critical variable in explaining the destruction of this unique example of early modern entrepreneurship. Amsterdam Jews appeared up to the mid-17th century as Braudelian “great Jewish merchants.” However, the New Christians, heretic judaizantes in the eyes of the Inquisition, dispersed around the world group sui generis, were equally crucial. Their religious identities were fluid, but at the same time they and the “new Jews” from Amsterdam formed a part of economic modernity epitomized by the rebellious Netherlands and the developing Atlantic economy. At the height of their influence they played a pivotal, albeit controversial, role in the rising slave trade. The disappearance of New Christians in Latin America had to be contextualised with inquisitorial persecutions and growing competition in mind.