History
The Jews in the early modern Caribbean and the Atlantic world
Document Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
In the wake of the first Spanish voyages across the Atlantic, men and women of Jewish descent, mainly Portuguese-speaking, began leaving the Iberian Peninsula for the New World. Many generations of these conversos found new abodes in American societies that left them little room to express themselves as Jews. In the 1630s and 1640s, scores of them were punished for "judaizing" by the American tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition in Cartegena de Indias, Lima, and Mexico-City. The "judaizers" who remained would largely assimilate or abandon Spanish America altogether. At the same time, the Dutch capture from the Portuguese of Pernambuco in northern Brazil in 1630 held great promise for Jews. The colony founded by the Dutch allowed Jews not only to settle there but to profess their religion openly. The second quarter of the seventeenth century was thus a watershed in the history of Atlantic Jewry. Henceforth, they would largely avoid the Iberian settlements and prefer those of the Dutch and the English.
Publication Title
The Cambridge History of Judaism
Publication Date
11-16-2017
Volume
7
First Page
972
Last Page
996
ISBN
9781139017169
DOI
10.1017/9781139017169.038
Keywords
Atlantic world, Jewish, Dutch, assimilation
Repository Citation
Klooster, Wim, "The Jews in the early modern Caribbean and the Atlantic world" (2017). History. 39.
https://commons.clarku.edu/historyfac/39
