A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe

Chapter 3: Between the Dutch Republic and Morocco

Chapter 3 Between the Dutch Republic and Morocco amsterdam After the Expulsion of 1492, Saint-Jean-de-Luz on France’s Côte Basque became a common staging post for Jews fleeing Iberia, who traveled on from there to Venice, Tunis, Istanbul, and other places.1 At some time in the spring of 1608, Samuel and Joseph Pallache followed the well-established route from Saint-Jean-de-Luz to Amsterdam, a powerful magnet for exiles, where the first Jewish congregations were then starting to take shape.2 Journeys to the Netherlands were facilitated by the contacts of the great converso trading families of Saint-Jean-de-Luz with Jews in Amsterdam .3 These conversos had done much to create the Dutch commercial network of which Saint-Jean-de-Luz was a part: they transported high-quality Castilian wool to French Atlantic ports, where it was traded for merchandise unloaded from Dutch ships, the boom in this trade allowing for a rapid growth in Portuguese Jewish communities in southwestern France and guaranteeing the presence of conversos with Dutch connections.4 As well as conversos, French towns like Saint-Jean-de-Luz also contained significant numbers of moriscos after their expulsion from Spain in 1609. Indeed, the expulsion of the moriscos created further trading opportunities for the conversos and provided them with openings for more illicit kinds of trafficking. Legal regulations prevented moriscos from taking precious metals, jewels, or letters of credit out of Spain, and some moriscos sought to subvert these restrictions by smuggling wealth over the border. The converso traders, with their wide experience of fraudulent transactions , became the ideal agents to assist the moriscos in these clandestine undertakings, and archives at Simancas show that Jews and moriscos often helped one another obtain papers or export money from Spain.5 Further evidence of such dealings is provided by a series of letters sent to Philip III from Saint-Jean-de-Luz between February and June 1612 by an agent named Lorenzo Suárez. Suárez informed the king about the movements of moriscos in the south of France, telling him that many of them had used false passes to reenter Spain and transfer wealth out of the country, often with the assistance of Jewish financiers in cities like Tunis and Istanbul.6 On April 8, 1608, shortly after arriving in Amsterdam, Samuel applied for Dutch passports for himself and his brother Joseph. His application to the States General makes mention neither of the years the Pallaches had previously spent in Spain nor of their attempts to find permanent posts for themselves there. It simply describes the brothers as two Jews “from Fez in Barbary” who wished to leave Morocco and settle in Holland because of the wars and domestic uncertainty.7 The passports were granted, but were then withdrawn two weeks later for reasons that are unknown, but that may have had something to do with their recent Spanish past. The Pallaches were forced to return to Morocco at this stage. In the event, however, this proved to be only a minor setback for Samuel, who had already accumulated enough contacts and experience during his brief time in Amsterdam to be able to return the following year as an official envoy of Sultan Muley Zaydan.8 It is possible to add some detail to what is known of Samuel’s first months in Amsterdam thanks, firstly, to a declaration made before the Dutch notary Willem Benninck on June 21, 1617, more than a year after Samuel’s death. The statement was signed by a group of Portuguese merchants led by Duarte Fernandes, a prominent member of the Jewish community , who is thought to have assisted Samuel in the months after his arrival in the city. Fernandes and the other merchants declared, at Joseph Pallache’s request, that the Pallache brothers had arrived in Amsterdam about ten years earlier and that they had possessed a considerable amount of money at that time. The merchants stated that the Pallaches had chartered a ship a few months after their arrival, which was loaded with goods to be sold in Morocco, and that they had intended to use the same ship to bring their wives, children, and personal effects back to Amsterdam. 54 a man of three worlds Samuel Pallache commanded the ship, which sailed to Tétouan and then on to Safi, where it was seized by pirates...