Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800 (review)

This edited collection of essays presents its readers with the fruits of the first Lavy Colloquium, which was held at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, U.S.A.) in March 2005 with the theme of "Atlantic Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism." It seeks, in the words of the editors Richard Kagan and Philip Morgan, to contribute to "the convergence of two streams of scholarly endeavour: one focused on early modern Atlantic history and the other on so-called Port Jews" (p. vii). These two streams have indeed developed in parallel directions although great efforts have been made in the past to link them. As early as 1985, Jonathan Israel published his magisterial European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750 (Clarendon Press) and the subject has witnessed a surge of academic interest and research in these two streams during the past decade. The study of "Port Jews" has most notably been advanced by two absorbing collections of essays on this topic published under the editorial direction of Professor David Cesarani: Port Jews and Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550-1950 (Routledge, 2002) and, edited in collaboration with Gemma Romain, Jews and Port Cities 1590-1990: Commerce, Communities and Cosmopolitanism (Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd, 2006).

Likewise, there has been a growing focus on the active involvement of both Jews and conversos (the descendants of Sephardic Jews who were converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) in the development of the commercial networks within the Atlantic World from which a large part of Western Europe's prosperity derived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the "Age of Mercantilism". Amongst the most notable works to have appeared in print on this topic have been the collection of articles assembled in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1400-1800, edited by Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (Berghahn Books, 2001); A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal's Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640, authored by Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert (Oxford University Press, 2007), who is also a contributor to this volume, and Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, by Jonathan Schorsch (E.J. Brill, 2009). As they specify in their preface, the editors of this book seek to build upon previous studies. The questions that this collection of essays seeks to examine can be divided into two categories: Firstly, there is the problem of defining Jewish identity within the early modern Atlantic World. Secondly, it addresses the issue of the manner in which Jews/Conversos dealt with the challenges presented by their "marginal" identity with the societies in which they circulated, how they developed strategies to circumvent the obstacle this marginal status presented and achieved commercial success. The book is divided into three distinct parts.

Part one is entitled "Context" and contains two essays: "Jews and Crypto-Jews in the Atlantic World Systems, 1500-1800" by Jonathan Israel (pp. 3-17) and "Jewish History in the Age of Atlanticism" by Adam Sutcliffe (pp. 18-30). These essays seek to offer the reader the context that is necessary to fully grasp the arguments of those in the following two parts. Israel's essay analyses the complex realities behind the Jewish and Converso presence in the early modern Atlantic World. He examines the manner in which a mixture of government policies, alterations in the balance of military and economic power within the Atlantic World as well the cultural traits of Jewish and Converso communities not only enabled them to create successful trade networks during the seventeenth century but eventually also contributed to their decline in the following century. Adam Sutcliffe's study highlights the problems of studying "Jewish History" within the context of the early modern Atlantic. His well-structured essay insists upon the importance of recognizing the complex nature...