Search

In the 17th century, descendants of forcibly baptized Iberian Jews (Conversos) founded the Jewish Portuguese community in Hamburg. Many of these Sephardic businessmen achieved great wealth and social recognition. Despite this, they were estranged from the Ashkenazi and non-Jewish citizens of Hamburg; they emphasized their affiliation to European and transatlantic  nação (“nation”) Portuguese Jews. As home to the largest Portuguese-Jewish community in Germany and an important hub in the network of  nação communities, Hamburg became the most important place of mem…

In the first half of the 17th century, the Brazilian port of Recife was at the center of the Portuguese–Dutch colonial conflict over territories on the northeastern coast of South America. Under Dutch rule (1630–1654), the city flourished as a center of trade, and the freedom of religion granted to the Jews led to the foundation of the first Jewish community in the New World in 1636. In the following years, Recife primarily attracted Jews from Amsterdam (Esnoga), who were mainly active in the sl…

In the early modern era Jewish and New Christian pirates, privateers, buccaneers as well as ship owners, agents and “negreiros” (slave traders; Slave Trade) were in the service of sultans, kings, and trading companies. Many of them fought the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic countries from which they or their ancestors had been expelled under the threat of being burnt to death. Especially in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, from the 16th until the 18th century they used the extra-legal expanse…

An agricultural settlement in the interior of Suriname, which was established in the 17th century in the course of the colonization of America by Portuguese Sephardic Jews from the Caribbean and Brazil. A plantation-based economy and slave ownership made the Jewish Savanna one of the most profitable colonies in the Americas and bestowed considerable prosperity to the Jewish plantation owners. Due to a number of factors, the colony gradually disintegrated in the 18th and 19th centuries, and its inhabitants relocated to other Caribbean states or North America.1. Jews in the Cari…