Atlantic diasporas [Texte imprimé] : Jews, Conversos, and crypto-Jews in the age of mercantilism, 1500-1800 / edited by Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan

Publ. à l'occasion du "First Lavy colloquium : Atlantic Jewry in an age of mercantilism", tenu au Homewood Campus de la Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (Maryland), les 25 et 26 mars 2005

Notes bibliogr.

Jews and crypto-Jews in the Atlantic world systems, 1500-1800 / Jonathan Israel -- Jewish history in an age of Atlanticism / Adam Sutcliffe -- Networks of colonial entrepreneurs: the founders of the Jewish settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s / Wim Klooster -- English markets, Jewish merchants, and Atlantic endeavors: Jews and the making of British transatlantic commercial culture, 1650-1800 / Holly Snyder -- La Nación amongst the nations: Portuguese, and other maritime trading diasporas in the Atlantic, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries / Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert -- Sephardic merchants in the early modern Atlantic and beyond: toward a comparative historical approach to business cooperation / Francesca Trivellato -- Jews and new Christians in Dutch Brazil 1630-1654 / Bruno Feitler -- A matriarchal matter: slavery, conversion, and upward mobility in Suriname's Jewish community / Aviva Ben-Ur -- Catholics, Jews and Muslims in early seventeenth-century Guiné / Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta-- These Indians are Jews!: Lost tribes, crypto-Jews, and Jewish self-fashioning in Antonio de Montezino's Relación of 1644 / Ronnie Perelis

This wide-ranging narrative explores the role that Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews played in settling and building the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1800. Through the interwoven themes of markets, politics, religion, culture, and identity, Atlantic Diasporas demonstrates that Jews were active and equal participants in the imperial age along with the Dutch, Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French

Organized into four sections, the essays here demonstrate that the world of Atlantic Jewry, most often typified by Port Jews involved in mercantile pursuits, was more complex than commonly depicted and included land- and slave-owning Jews "Plantation Jews" as well as those who converted to Christianity. The first section discusses the diaspora in relation to maritime systems, commerce, and culture on the Atlantic and includes an overview of Jewish history on both sides of the ocean. The four essays in the second section provide an in-depth look at Jewish mercantilism, from settlements in Dutch America to involvement in building British, Portuguese, and other trading cultures to the dispersal of Sephardic merchants. In the third section, the chapter authors assess the roles of identity and religion in settling the Atlantic, looking closely at religious conversion; slavery; relationships among Jews, Christians, and Muslims; and the legacy of the lost tribes of Israel. A concluding commentary elucidates the fluidity of identity and boundaries in the formation of the Atlantic world