In less than thirty years after Columbusâ first expedition, Cuba and Hispaniola, the main islands of the Caribbean, had already been inhabited almost exclusively by Spanish conquistadors, their first descendants and incoming settlers from Spain. Even before the conquest of Mexico, the Caribbean TaÃno Indians would be ravaged by disease and the labour regime imposed by the conquerors. By the mid-16th century, of the estimated population of just over 50 million Indians of pre-Columbian Latin America1 no more than 2.5â15 per cent had survived, depending on the region. Two and a half centuries later, colonial Mexico, Brazil and Peru were home to 2.26 million descendants of the European conquistadors and the metropolitan influx of Spaniards and Portuguese (21.5 per cent of the total population) (Newson 2006: 148, 160).2 With control of the major economic resources and the monopoly of violence secured by local militias and metropolises, this white minority formed the elite of the new societies.
A small part of it consisted of Jews, or more precisely, conversos and New Christians (Catholics whose Jewish ancestors had been baptised voluntarily or under compulsion in Spain and Portugal), and Jews migrating from Amsterdam and other cities of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (hereafter: the Republic or the United Provinces). Estimates, however, are subject to a considerable margin of error and are probably greatly exaggerated. They suggested that among the more than 2 million Europeans who migrated to the Americas between 1500 and 1760, there were no more than 50â70,000 New Christians and 20,000 Jews, translating into an average annual gross migration of between 270â340 people.3 Thus, no more than 4.5 per cent of total European migration in the colonial era.
The influx of New Christians into Spanish America would come after 1580, especially in the first decades of the 17th century. The terrible defeat suffered by the Portuguese in 1578 in the battle against the Muslims at Al-Qasr al-Kabir in Morocco, the death of King Sebastian and the extinction of the Aviz dynasty opened the way for Spanish predominance â the Iberian Union was established with Philip ii as monarch of both Spain and Portugal. Its creation opened, with some delay, the Portuguese New Christiansâ access to the markets of Spain and the Spanish colonies. It should be borne in mind, after all, that while Portuguese New Christians appeared in Latin America as early as the beginning of the 16th century, the presence of Amsterdam Jews, mostly of Portuguese origin, dates only from the 1630s. However, the importance of both
A consternation, however, arises during the literature review. The role of European Jews and New Christians in shaping the economies of colonial Latin America in the 16th to the 18th centuries is a topic usually ignored even in the best general historical studies of this part of the New World or reduced to a few remarks and/or footnotes (Bakewell 2004, Lockhart and Schwartz 1983, Bethell 1984, Bulmer-Thomas, Coatsworth and Cortés Conde 2006, Elliott 2006, Kamen 2003). Also, in general accounts of Jewish history, the history of the New Christians and Jews in colonial Latin America is treated as a secondary issue (Avni 1992). The underlying theme is the tumultuous changes that, over the course of three centuries, shaped essentially new Jewish communities in Europe, while also shifting the focus of Jewish life towards Central and Eastern Europe.
This is not surprising. The history of the New World as seen by historians tends, in this case, to be at odds with the widespread belief in the overwhelming role of the Jews in the creation of the colonial world. In the perspective of Latin America as a whole, as well as of individual countries, the actions of much more powerful agents other than the Jews stand out. And yet the reflection arises that this is not the only reason. It seems that the complexity of the topic, the fluid boundaries between the convictions, including those of historians, amassed knowledge, and above all the difficulties involved in researching the role of minorities in social processes, tend to result in defensive reactions. These in turn are also expressed in the relegation of the problem to the background, in the minimalisation of its significance. Years ago, R. H. Popkin, an historian of Enlightenment philosophical thought and of Sephardi Jewsâ attempts at coming to grips with the reconstruction of their religious and social identity destroyed in the 15thâ16th century persecutions, observed that âthe Jews had been the invisible man of Western history for the last 2,000 yearsâ (quoted in Liebman 1975: 141). He was not the first to admonish the proper place for ethnic and religious minorities. Let us just recall Adam Smithâs remark that it was, âthe disorder and injustice of the European governmentsâ that in fact contributed to âthe peopling and civilisation of Americaâ. The result was a long list of exiles making up the New World: âThe English puritans, restrained at home (â¦). The English catholics, treated with much greater injustice (â¦); the quakers (â¦). The Portuguese Jews, persecuted by the inquisition, stript of their fortunes, and banished to Brazilâ (Smith 1904: 190f).
In this book we will focus on analysis of the role the New Christians and Jews played in the formation of the colonial economy of Latin America in the first two centuries after the conquest and this way also contributed to the emergence of the Atlantic world. This survey is intended as a kind of commentary on selected issues taken up in the literature on the subject. Polish historians have not addressed these issues, apart from a few references.6 I mention
However, it is worth starting with a brief declaration of what will not be discussed in this book. In addressing the role of the New Christians and Jews
Here are the issues we intend to address (with varying degrees of detail) in this book: Jews and New Christians. We question the overuse of the term âthe role of the Jewsâ. It blurs the growing differences in that era between the community, culture and economic priorities of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands (from the second half of the 17th century also English Jews) and the activities of Iberian and Latin American New Christians and the ways in which they participated in wider society. There is no doubt that the activities of all these groups overlapped even in the second half of the 17th century within a network of family and commercial ties. It does, however, raise the question as to whether it is legitimate to treat the New Christians in toto as part of a structurally and functionally tight-knit Jewish diaspora whose glue was religion (or a memory of it). It does not seem accurate to diminish the consequences associated with the destruction of Iberian institutional Judaism, in particular the breakdown of the religious community and the blurring of the criteria for the formation of non-Catholic identities. It seems almost impossible to formulate general statements about the religious preferences of converts subjected to the authority of Catholic monarchs. The result of the persecution that went hand in hand with the accentuation of increasingly racialised criteria, which accompanied the economic advancement of part of the New Christian elite, âwas to revive New Christiansâ consciousness, not of their alleged Jewishness, but of a community of interests distinct from those of Old Christiansâ (Boyajian 1979: 142, also Bodian 1999: 10â17). By contrast, it was a misunderstanding to describe the Lisbon New Christian merchant-bankers, who financed part of the Spanish monarchyâs debt in 1627, as âPortuguese Jewish and converso (â¦) financiersâ (Munck 1990: 55). We therefore suggest treating the New Christians as a group sui generis.
This is one issue. There is another, closely linked to it. The New Christians who were active in the Atlantic world were referred to, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, as âPortugueseâ. Outside observers, however, often included in the Portuguese La Nação not only Jewish Amsterdam merchants, crypto-Jews and New Christians who originated from Portugal, but also Portuguese Old Christians. Should this external view be considered a conclusive criterion? Can other, stronger arguments be adduced for the hypothesis that the Portuguese Nation of the 16th and 17th centuries was diverse, but at the same time represented a community shaped by long-distance trade, despite religious differences? If so, this reinforces the hypothesis that the New Christians constituted a group sui generis increasingly integrated within the larger context of La Nação networks. At the same time, these cristãos-novos were influencing, by their very presence, the evolution of the attitudes and mentality of the Old Christians participating in the Atlantic economy. This interesting issue has recently been raised by Studnicki-Gizbert (2007, 2009) in relation to the years 1492â1640. However, the links between the New Christians and Amsterdam Jews, who were just emerging at the threshold of the 16th century, are more often than not marginalized when discussing the emergence of the Atlantic world. They are a neglected element in the picture painted by the historian: âThe Atlantic Jews age was a time when the American Jewish epicenter was (â¦) in the insular and circum-Caribbean; when for centuries most Atlantic Jews were of Iberian (â¦) origins; when most hemispheric American Jews lived in slave societiesâ (Ben-Ur 2020: 12f). Thus, we intend to
The main directions and forms of Jewish and New Christian activity. Neither the Dutch Jews nor the Portuguese or Spanish New Christians were independent actors in the emerging Atlantic economy, even when they went beyond the established rules of the game (by participating, for example, in large-scale contraband). Above all, they were not the creators of these rules and their guardians. To describe their participation in the development of the Latin American economies of the colonial era as a decisive part of the continentâs economic history would simply contradict the source material. Even in the period up to 1650, the period of the apogee of the involvement of New Christians and Jews in international trade: âThe fact that Jewish merchants were to be found in all the key centres of capitalism does not mean to say that they created themâ (Braudel 1995: 160).
By contrast, in the 16th and much of the 17th century, the New Christians and Jews constituted, together with the Dutch, the Flemish, the merchants of the Italian city-states and the English, the vanguard of European commercial capitalism. In turn, such capitalism âcould be a creative force, bringing into existence a system of production for exchangeâ (Sweezy 1978: 42). The New Christians and Jews thus not only participated in ushering in the Golden Age of the Netherlands, but they co-created important elements of the Latin American economies and, more broadly, the Atlantic world. The initiation of the slave trade on a wider scale during this period was a venture organised and controlled until the first half of the 17th century primarily by Portuguese New Christians. In contrast, neither the New Christians nor the Dutch or English Jews would play a major role in the boom in the slave trade from the second half of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century.
At the same time, the family and trade networks they created, important in certain markets and for certain commodities, were not closed or monopolistic, in the sense of excluding Catholic and Protestant merchants. The increasing scale and complexity and diversity of commercial operations in the Atlantic economy of the time meant that achieving such a monopoly in the long term was impossible. This was evidenced, among other things, by the emergence of loose ties involving Jewish, crypto-Jewish, New Christian and Old Christian merchants, non-Jewish trade agents and intermediaries. Indeed, a model example of such ties was the late 16th century collaboration in the marketing of Indian pepper between the powerful New Christian Ximenes dâAragão
Jews and New Christians, on the other hand, were unique in some respects among the minorities participating in international trade. Alongside them in this period we find not only the Huguenots and other Protestants, but also Flemings, Basques, Bretons, Scots, Armenians, Greeks, etc. merchant communities probably rivalling the âPortugueseâ group in numbers. What distinguished the latter was not so much the scale of their operations as their degree of internationalisation and their location in the main European and overseas trade centres. One could say that it was the medieval tradition of Jewish Radhanite merchants travelling with goods from the âcourt of the King of the Franksâ to India and China that was transferred to the new conditions created from the late 15th century. Scattered across the Atlantic world, the Mediterranean, West Africa and Asia, Jews and New Christians operated with the help of their commercial agents and associates (including Old Christians) throughout the world economy of the time. North America was the least penetrated by the 18th century.
The particular importance of the 16th to 17th centuries. As in the Atlantic economy as a whole, in Latin America too, the apogee of the long-distance trade-centred activity of the New Christians and Jews occurred up to the second half of the 17th century, thus the era of the first system of expansion created and dominated by Spain and Portugal. The Netherlands, contesting the dominance of the Iberian powers from the end of the 16th century, found itself in a kind of transitional situation: the first system of expansion had already lost its momentum, while the second â shaped in fierce competition between England, the Spanish empire and the United Provinces â was only in the initial stages of development (Emmer 1993). The 17th century is divided from this point of view into two parts, the era of the transition from âSeville to Amsterdamâ (Wallerstein 1974: 199â201) and then from Amsterdam to London. The logic of the activities and expansion of Dutch companies in Asia and the Atlantic already fitted well into the second system, calling into question the methods of organising long-distance trade prevalent in the first system, and also paving the way for the new hegemon, England. The activities of the New Christians and Jews also flourished during this transitional period. The peak of their activity in the Atlantic thus occurred in the first half of the 17th century.
The case of Brazil was to some extent separate. For here the economic activity of the New Christians was evident from at least the middle of the 16th century, not only in long-distance trade, but also in new settlements and the plantation economy and therefore in the production of luxury goods. From the late 17th century, there were also many New Christians
The gradual decline of the role of the New Christians and Sephardic Jews in Latin America and the Atlantic trade was caused by two fundamental factors: (a) the emergence of powers more powerful than the Iberian empires and the Netherlands (England and France) and their growing and differently organised economic elites; this meant the entry as early as the end of the 17th century of a rapidly expanding second system of expansion, which was at the same time a response to the extremely rapid growth of overseas trade, a phenomenon the commercial and financial elites of the New Christians and Sephardic Jews were unable to respond to effectively; (b) the increased activity of the Inquisition in Spanish America and Brazil from the late 16th century and intensified from the mid-17th and early 18th centuries, but also in the Iberian metropolises, symbolised by the successively revealed âgreat conspiraciesâ of Judaising heretics in Ciudad de México, Lima and Cartagena de Indias (hereafter also: Cartagena). To some extent separate from these was the failure, after less than a quarter of a century of existence, of âDutch Brazilâ (1630â1654), and thus the attempt to move from maritime commercial activities to Dutch and Jewish settlement and trade. The plantation economy in Suriname was merely an extension in the 18th century â and in the long run also unsuccessful â of the earlier Pernambuco experiment.
Around 1830 the total number of slaves in all slave-trading countries amounted to 6,822,759. That the pretty little damsels of Paris and London were able to mobilize this vast black army to satisfy their whims is an intriguing thought.
sombart 1967: 145
The two accounts of losses and gains â the one on a macro scale and the one limited to Jews and New Christians â are closely linked, and the attempt to separate them leads, whatever the intention, down a blind alley. Those, therefore, who regard the emergence of Europe in the New World, from a humanitarian or any other point of view, as a calamity and a destruction difficult to imagine, also regard the activity of Jews and New Christians as part of this catastrophe. The opposite is true for those who, without minimising the scale of the destruction and the enormity of the misfortune caused by the appearance of Europeans, will make the reference point the process of the formation of a new, multicultural Latin America and therefore, to emphasise after Smith, âthe nature of those events themselvesâ.
It is impossible to reconcile these two points of view, although they are nowadays only symbolic. Instead, it seems sensible to try to understand the interweaving of motivations, conditioning worldviews and circumstances. Only in this way is it possible to come closer to answering the question of why Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, descended from the New Christians, governor of Nuevo Reino de León in New Spain in the 1680s and subsequently accused (unjustifiably) of protecting the judaizantes, can be described simultaneously as a beneficiary of slavery and as âone of the more enlightened and humane conquistadorsâ (Temkin 2011, Simpson 1971: 193). Whether he benefited from the slave trade as a royal official in the Cape Verde islands, we do not know. As a later governor, he obtained permission to buy them. On the other hand, the doubts raised do not evade questions about the different styles of colonisation and the creation of Latin America as a strongly differentiated entity. The French and British Caribbean differed, even though both are today subsumed under the general categories of colonial plantation economies and slave societies. The same can be said of the role played by the New Christians in Brazil or the Jews in the British and Dutch Caribbean. As Jews and New Christians, the descendants of the Sephardim were part of the European expansion. Contrary
The history of the New Christians in colonial Latin America was intertwined with the presence of the Iberian Inquisition, and their activity was constantly accompanied by the threat of the tribunal. Likewise, moreover, in the metropolises. It is therefore not surprising that, in Portugal, the dispute over the assessment of the role played by the New Christians and the Inquisition has become an enduring part of historical reflection. Depending on the researcher, responsibility for Portugalâs fate, its successes and disasters, was attributed differently. João Lúcio de Azevedo, a prominent Portuguese historian of the early 20th century, would see the New Christians as the main source of misfortune. In contrast, the co-founder of Brazilian historiography João Capistrano de Abreu, states: âI see the misfortunes of Portugal â not in the New Christians â vae victis â but in the angelic Holy Officeâ (quoted in Schwartz 1997: xxviii).9
But the point is not only in the tragic intertwining of the history of the New Christians and the Inquisition in the metropolis and colonies and their understandable quest for survival. Jews and New Christians also sought in the New World to preserve their position in the European white elite. These efforts were not fruitless. So we see them as merchants, including slave traders, and co-organisers of contraband, as craftsmen, medics and apothecaries, jewellers and ship carpenters, senhores de engenho, we find them among the Brazilian bandeirantes who were the terror of the Guarani Indians and the Spanish Jesuits, among those who fought the Indians and held office in Suriname, but also among Caribbean corsairs and pirates, diocesan priests, Inquisition officials and even bishops (one in Latin America, several in the metropolis). They âJudaisedâ Indians and slaves at times (while perpetuating caste and racial prejudices), and they also filled the secret prisons of the Inquisition. They were burned at the stake.10 To the amazement of the nobility and mob attending
When, after an hiatus of some three centuries, authentic Jewish communities sprang up once again on Portuguese soil (â¦).their membership were all immigrants from Gibraltar and Morocco. Indigenous Portuguese families were conspicuous by their absence.
saraiva 2001: 233
The memory of the New Christians and Sephardic Jews in colonial Latin America was therefore already historical. There is no question of a continuity linking their history with the later, growing presence of Eastern European and Oriental Jews emigrating from the Mediterranean area after the turn of the 20th century. Marked by the activity of the great Jewish and New Christian merchants, the period up to the mid-17th century was a mere century-long flash.
The figure given for the population of pre-Columbian Latin America reflects the relative consensus among scholars reached at the end of the 20th century. It was contested as being almost three times overstated by Maddison (2001: 233â236).
According to other estimates, in 1760 the population of European descent in the Spanish colonies and Brazil could be estimated at 3.39 million (including 390,000 in Brazil) (Pétré-Grenouilleau 2009: 47).
The estimate of the number of New Christians is based on the (debatable) assumption that their share among Portuguese emigrants to Latin America corresponded to the share of Jews in the Portuguese population at the end of the 15th century, i.e. 10 per cent (Drescher 2001: 459f). The lower threshold of 50,000 New Christians is due to the adoption of a different estimate of the number of Portuguese emigrants to Latin America (net emigration) than that given by Drescher (Eltis 2000: 9). In contrast, Lewin (1987: 185) estimated the number of New Christians at 40,000, including 10,000 in Brazil.
A figure of 2,000â3,000 for New Spain is given by Liebman (1963: 100). This is disputed as âa bit too highâ by Baron (1973: 279). Israel (1990a: 317, 319, 330), on the other hand, estimates that in 1641 the Portuguese (without differentiating between âOldâ and âNewâ Christians) probably constituted 7 per cent of the white population of New Spain, i.e. 11,000â12,000 people. There were 1,000â1,500 Portuguese living in Ciudad de México in that year.
By way of example only, as the literature is already vast. A general historical overview, taking into account the literature up to the mid-1960s, can be found in Salo W. Baronâs magnum opus, as well as in the works of the next generation of historians, notably Jonathan i. Israel and Jonathan Schorsch. The activities of Dutch Jews have been addressed by Yosef Kaplan, Daniel M. Swetschinski and Miriam Bodian, among others. Of importance for the understanding the converso phenomenon are contributions of Benzion Netanyahu, Norman Roth, David S. Gitlitz and Claude B. Stuczynski (from the younger generation). In the study of the Jewish presence in colonial Latin America, the earlier works of Seymour B. Liebman, Boleslao Lewin from Argentina and Günter Böhm from Chile, as well as excerpts from books by the Spanish historians J. Caro Baroja and A. DomÃnguez Ortiz, are noteworthy. The problem of judaizantes in Spanish America and Brazil up to the end of the 17th century has recently been taken up in monographs by Bruno Feitler, Ronaldo Vainfas and Ricardo Escobar Quevedo. Arnold Wiznitzerâs book on the Jewish presence in Brazil is still worth reading. Among the classic works on Brazilian New Christians, one should mention contributions by José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, Anita Waingort Novinsky, and José Gonçalves Salvador (including a controversial book on the participation of New Christians in the slave trade until the mid-17th century). Of note are contributions from Brazilian scholars of the younger generation concerning various aspects of the presence of New Christians both in Brazil and in the Spanish colonies, especially in Rio de la Plata. From more recent contributions, the Jewish presence in Nieuw-Holland, as well as Suriname and the Caribbean, are dealt with by, among others, numerous articles by Wim Klooster, monographs by Robert Cohen, Wieke Vink and Aviva Ben-Ur. Among the collective works published in recent years, see above all the volumes edited by P. Bernardini and N. Fiering and R. L. Kagan and P.D. Morgan, as well as the monographic issues of, for example, Anais de História de Além-Mar (dedicated to the theme Os Judeus e o comércio colonial), Journal of Global Slavery (on various aspects of the Iberian slave trade) and Jewish History (special issue on Portuguese New Christian identities, 1516â1700).
Research on Gaspar da Gama, a native of PoznaÅ, an important figure who appeared at the beginning of Portuguese colonisation, is modest. The co-founder of Polish historiography Lelewel (1858: 412f, 168, 581) wrote of him in the 19th century: âPoles travelled always and endlessly, and many out of desire or necessity in the far corners of the world (â¦). Without a Jew from PoznaÅ, who travelled around India and was baptised Gaspard da Gama, Vasko (sic) de Gama 1498 and Cabral 1500, they would not have had the success in their expeditions that he gained. Amerigo Vespuzzi 1500 wrote down Gaspardâs storiesâ. Only one historian of geography and cartography wrote more extensively on this PoznaÅ Jew almost a century ago (Olszewicz 1931: 187f, 203).
Even Werner Sombart, the well-known German historian of the turn of the 20th century, who asserted that when looking at the portraits of the directors of the Dutch East India Company he could easily recognise Jews, distanced himself from this concept. But ⦠having signalled his doubts, he nevertheless resorted to his favourite piece of evidence: âthe oldest portaits show [Columbus] to have had a Jewish faceâ (Sombart 1951: 52).
In particular, the loan provided by LuÃs de Santángel, Chief Intendant of the Catholic King and Queen, âof the Rothschild family of that timeâ (Kayserling 1894: 64). These âRothschildsâ had already been Christianised for several generations. Santángel obtained the funds to finance almost 60 per cent of the cost of the expedition as a loan from an institution founded on traditional armed hermandades (Ladero Quesada 1992). Columbusâs second expedition â at least 1,200 sailors and settlers â was financed by the Crown in large part with funds seized from Jews expelled in 1492.
Let us note already at this point that the Spanish Inquisition, although established to expose the judaizantes, was not confined to fighting them. From the middle of the 16th century, the problem recedes into the background in the metropolis. In the New World, it will appear in the first half of the 17th century, although even here the Inquisition will be mostly preoccupied with other offences against faith and morality (Hordes 1982b).
According to Eltis (2000: 71), 32,000 judaizantes were burnt at the stake from the late 15th to the early 19th century. This is a mistake. This figure includes all those sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition and handed over to the secular authorities for execution. Among them were some 17,000 relaxados en estátua, i.e. executed symbolically (in effigie â in place of the absentee convict, his or her portrait was burned). According to more recent calculations, between 1480 and 1534, i.e. at the apogee of the repression, the Spanish Inquisition sent 2,000 victims to the stake (Kamen 2005: 65).
While the political demise of the Marquis de Pombal after the kingâs death in 1777 enabled the release from prison of many of his opponents, including the arrested Jesuits, it did not result in a reversal of decisions concerning the New Christians.