Notas |
- De Encyclopedia Judaica:
In the Americas ? Until 1730 the Dutch West India Company maintained a monopoly on the importation of slaves into all the Dutch colonies in the Americas, but Jews appear to have been among the major retailers of slaves in Dutch Brazil (1630?54), because Jews possessed ready money and were willing to trade slaves for sugar. The bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia congregations (1648) included an imposta (Jewish tax) of 5 soldos for each slave which a Brazilian Jew purchased from the West Indies Company. In Curaçao, the Dutch occasionally gave permission to a merchant to conduct independent transactions in slaves; two such Jewish entrepreneurs were the brothers David and Jacob Senior, who came to the island from Amsterdam about 1685. Another Curaçao Jew, Manuel Alvares Correa (1650?1717), who was active in the local slave trade for many years, served in 1699 as an intermediary between the Dutch and Portuguese West Indies companies for the transfer of a shipment of slaves from Africa to Mexico via Curaçao. In all of the American colonies, whether Dutch, French, or British, almost every merchant or trader had dealings in slaves: when he acted as auctioneer or agent for the sale of an estate, when he served his planter clients in the sale or purchase of slaves or in the pursuit of runaways. In the Barbados, until 1706, Jews were limited by law in the number of slaves they themselves could own, but in Jamaica there was no such restriction. Among the Jamaican Jewish merchants who seem to have specialized in the slave trade were David Henriques, Hyman *Levy , and especially Alexander Lindo (1753?1812), who was a major importer of slaves during the period 1782?92. During an investigation of slave mortality conducted in Jamaica in 1789, Lindo testifies that 150 slaves on a ship ?consigned to? him had died in the Middle Passage and that another 20 perished after their arrival in Jamaica, but it is unclear whether he owned this slave shipment of the others in which he was involved. Members of the well-known *Gradis family of Bordeaux were active in the shipment of slaves from West Africa to such French colonies as Santo-Domingo (Dominican Republic).On the North American mainland, a number of Jews were active participants in the infamous triangular trade, which brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies, where they were exchanged for molasses, which was in turn taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa. David *Franks of Philadelphia was in this business during the early 1760s; Aaron *Lopez and Jacob Rodriguez *Rivera of Newport, Rhode Island, had at least one slaver on the high seas each year after 1764, and in 1772 and 1773 had a total of eight such ships under sail. Isaac Da *Costa of Charleston was another large-scale importer of slaves. In Louisiana, under both French and Spanish rule, the Monsanto brothers made frequent transactions in slaves; during 1787 they purchased 44 blacks.
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