The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800 (European Expansion & Global Interaction, 2)

Jews and Judaism played a significant role in the history of the expansion of Europe to the west as well as in the history of the economic, social, and religious development of the New World. They played an important role in the discovery, colonization, and eventually exploitation of the resources of the New World. Alone among the European peoples who came to the Americas in the colonial period, Jews were dispersed throughout the hemisphere; indeed, they were the only cohesive European ethnic or religious group that lived under both Catholic and Protestant regimes, which makes their study particularly fruitful from a comparative perspective. As distinguished from other religious or ethnic minorities, the Jewish struggle was not only against an overpowering and fierce nature but also against the political regimes that ruled over the various colonies of the Americas and often looked unfavorably upon the establishment and tleration of Jewish communities in their own territory. Jews managed to survive and occasionally to flourish against all odds, and their history in the Americas is one of the more fascinating chapters in the early modern history of European expansion provider's description Contents List of Illustrations Preface Maps A Milder Colonization: Jewish Expansion to the New World, and the New World in the Jewish Consciousness of the Early Modern Era I. The Old Newworld: Ideas and Representations of America in European and Jewish Consciousness and Intellectual History 1. Biblical History and the Americas: The Legend of Solomon’s Ophir, 1492–1591 2. Knowledge of Newly Discovered Lands among Jewish Communities of Europe (from 1492 to the Thirty Years’ War) 3. Jewish Scientists and the Origin of Modern Navigation 4. The Hope of the Netherlands: Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Idea of America 5. Israel in America: The Wanderings of the Lost Ten Tribes from Mikveigh Yisrael to Timothy McVeigh II. Identity at Stake: Concealing, Preserving, and Reshaping Judaism Among the Conversos and Marranos of Spanish America 6. New Christian, Marrano, Jew 7. Marrano Religiosity in Hispanic America in the Seventeenth Century 8. Crypto-Jews and the Mexican Holy Office in the Seventeenth Century 9. The Participation of New Christians and Crypto-Jews in the Conquest, Colonization, and Trade of Spanish America, 1521–1660 10. Crypto-Jews and New Christians in Colonial Peru and Chile III. The Luso-Brazilian Experience: Jews In Portuguese Latin America 11. Marranos and the Inquisition: On the Gold Route in Minas Gerais, Brazil 12. Outcasts from the Kingdom: The Inquisition and the Banishment of New Christians to Brazil IV. From Toleration to Expulsion: Identity,Trade, and Struggle for Survival in France and Caribbean French America 13. The Portuguese Jewish Nation of Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne: The American Dimension 14. Atlantic Trade and Sephardim Merchants in Eighteenth-Century France: The Case of Bordeaux 15. Jewish Settlements in the French Colonies in the Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Cayenne) and the “Black Code” 16. New Christians/”New Whites”: Sephardic Jews, Free People of Color, and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue, 1760–1789 V. Blossoming in Anotherworld: The Jews and the Jewish Communities in Dutch America 17. The Jews of Dutch America 18. The Jews in Suriname and Curaçao 19. An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights and Opportunities in Brazil, New Netherland, and New York 20. Antecedents and Remnants of Jodensavanne: The Synagogues and Cemeteries of the First Permanent Plantation Settlement of New World Jews VI. “The Brokers of Theworld”: American Jews, New Christians, and International Trade 21. Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade 22. New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy 23. New Christians as Sugar Cultivators and Traders in the Portuguese Atlantic, 1450–1800 24. The Jewish Moment and the Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650 VII. The Jews In Colonial British America 25. The Jews in British America Notes on Contributors Name Index Place Index Subject Index

This impressive volume shows that the history of minorities - specifically that of a diaspora - can open up completely new perspectives on the 'great' questions and developments of general history. · Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft

... this magnificent and much-needed volume ... is remarkably free, factual or interpretive. · American Jewish History

The age-old tension between value-free history and history with a moral is implicit throughout this fine volume. · The Jerusalem Report

A substantial contribution to the scholarship on Indian [Native-American]-European relations ... Specialists will find new nuggets to challenge existing interpretations, while readers new to the topic will find useful introductions and more detailed case studies that give some idea of the current issues under scholarly debate. All readers will experience the benefits of looking at one topic comparatively across vast amounts of space and time. · Itinerario

Jews and Judaism played a significant role in the history of the expansion of Europe to the west as well as in the history of the economic, social, and religious development of the New World. They played an important role in the discovery, colonization, and eventually exploitation of the resources of the New World. Alone among the European peoples who came to the Americas in the colonial period, Jews were dispersed throughout the hemisphere; indeed, they were the only cohesive European ethnic or religious group that lived under both Catholic and Protestant regimes, which makes their study particularly fruitful from a comparative perspective. As distinguished from other religious orethnic minorities, the Jewish struggle was not only against an overpowering and fierce nature but also against the political regimes that ruled over the various colonies of the Americas and often looked unfavorably upon the establishment and tleration of Jewish communities in their own territory. Jews managed to survive and occasionally to flourish against all odds, and their history in the Americas is one of the more fascinating chapters in the early modern history of European expansion.

Paolo Bernardini was a Fellow of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and of the Royal Historical Society. Currently he is Resident Director of the Padova Program, Boston University. Norman Fiering is the author of two books that were awarded the Merle Curti Prize for Intellectual History by the Organization of American Historians and of numerous articles. Since 1983, he has been Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.