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Sephardic Merchants and the Second Barbados: Jamaica

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Abstract

Jamaica as the “Second Barbados” forms a good test case to explore the impact of British mercantilist trade policies. This chapter begins with a discussion about the “Portuguese” and the role they played in facilitating Cromwell’s Western Design and focuses on Port Royal and the Sephardic merchant community that developed in the transit trade with Spanish America most of which was contraband. The wealth created from Port Royal’s commerce forms the basis for investment in sugar production during the last quarter of the seventeenth century but the role of Sephardic merchants in the sugar trade with London is limited due to the predominance of the commission trade which favors London merchants’ houses. Trade with Amsterdam is in the form of transit via Curacao.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Quote Joseph Addison, referred to in Seymour Drescher, “Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800, (Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 2001), pp. 439–470; p. 457.

  2. 2.

    Gordon Merrill, “The Role of Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area during the Seventeenth Century,” Caribbean Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, 1964, pp. 32–45; Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1984); James C. Boyajian, “New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy,” in Bernardini and Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West (2001), pp. 480–481.

  3. 3.

    According to Jacob Andrade, “The Jews of Jamaica: A Historical View,” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1, 1967, pp. 46–53, Jews were among the early settlers of the island and may have come along with Columbus on one of his two voyages. The island was deeded to the family of Columbus, and it is known that he was favorably inclined toward Jews. By marriage Jamaica came into possession of the Braganzas, who occupied the throne of Portugal. Jamaica did not come under the spell of the Inquisition, and though nominally under the Crown of Spain, it remained semiautonomous and Portuguese.

  4. 4.

    See, R.C. Nash, “The Organization of Trade and Finance in the British Atlantic Economy: 1600–1711,” in Peter A. Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, 1600–1820 (University South Carolina Press, Columbia S.C. 2005), pp. 98–99. In Barbados, the system tied in with the Royal African Company’s slave trade where slaves were delivered in return for bills of exchange in value of sugar.

  5. 5.

    S.D. Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 2006). In Barbados, Lascelles’ fortune was clearly built on slavery alongside colonial trade; see Harriet Pierce, “The Lasceelles Slavery Archive,” in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. LIX, 2013, pp. 72–87.

  6. 6.

    See also David Eltis, “New estimates of exports from Barbados and Jamaica, 1665–1701,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 4, 1995, pp. 631–648.

  7. 7.

    Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Caribbean Universities Press, Barbados, 1974), Appendix 1, “Sugar Imported into England and Wales,” pp. 487–489. See also David Eltis, “New estimates of exports from Barbados and Jamaica, 1665–1701,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 4, 1995, pp. 631–648.

  8. 8.

    Richard B. Sheridan, “The Plantation Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, 1625–1775,” Caribbean Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, 1969, pp. 5–25; Henry Hobhouse, Seeds of Change (Harper and Row, New York, 1985), pp. 65–66.

  9. 9.

    By 1655, the “English Atlantic” was becoming a reality with Cromwell in control of Parliament and with new imperial legislation, colonial production, and emergent trading patterns being put in place. See Carla G. Pestana, The English Atlantic in the Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2004), chapters 5 and 6, pp. 157–212; Epilogue, 213–226. Barbados and Governor Modiford were particularly supportive of restoration of royal rule, while Jamaica was still in its infant state of development.

  10. 10.

    Daviken Stucnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea (Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2007), pp. 91–121; 123–150; Jonathan I. Israel, “Curacao, Amsterdam, and the Rise of the Sephardic Trade System in the Caribbean, 1630–1700,” pp. 29–43: p. 34, and Gerard Nahon, “Amsterdam and the Portuguese Nacao of the Caribbean in the Eighteenth Century,” in Jane S. Gerber, The Jews in the Caribbean (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Liverpool, 2014), pp. 67–83.

  11. 11.

    Nuala Zahedieh, “Trade, Plunder, and Economic Development in Early English Jamaica, 1655–1689,” in The Economic History Review, Second Series, Volume XXXIX, no. 2, May, 1986b, pp. 205–222, and, “The Merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish Contraband Trade, 1655–1692,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Second Series, vol. XLII, October, 1986, pp. 570–593. See also, by the same author, “London and the Colonial Consumer in the late Seventeenth Century,” in The Economic History Review, New Series, vol. 47, no. 2, 1994, pp. 239–261.

  12. 12.

    Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Magellan (Random House, New York, 2003), p. 210. In the four voyages of Columbus, several New Christians came along as sailors and explorers and stayed on as settlers on the islands discovered by Columbus, including Hispaniola. For a discussion on New Christian participation, see Eva Alexandra Uchmany, “The Participation of New Christians and Crypto -Jews in the Conquest, Colonization, and Trade of Spanish America, 1521–1660,” in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds), The Jews and Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 2001), pp. 186–202.

  13. 13.

    See Alan Burns, History of the British West Indies (Allan and Unwin, London, Macmillan, New York, 1954), p. 52.

  14. 14.

    The term “Portuguese” refers to Portuguese settlers and merchants who were mostly New Christians and who hoped to evade the tribunals of the Inquisition in Portugal.

  15. 15.

    Alexandre Herculanov (trans. John C. Banner), History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal (AMS Press, New York, 1968), pp. 376–378; 380–381.

  16. 16.

    Frank Cundall and Joseph Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards: Abstracted from the Archives of Seville (Institute of Jamaica, Kingston, 1919), pp. 10–11.

  17. 17.

    Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Viking Penguin, New York, 1985), pp. 32–33. See also, J.H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography from its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1989), pp. 61–70. Among the Spanish colonies in the sixteenth century, Hispaniola became the major sugar producing and exporting colony. During the second half of the sixteenth century, there were 25 mills operating and the island exported about 100,000 arrobas a year not counting contraband trade carried out by Dutch, English, and French merchants; see Genaro Rodriquez Morel, “The Sugar Economy of Espanola in the Sixteenth Century,” in Stuart B. Schwartz, Tropical Babylons (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2004), pp. 85–114.

  18. 18.

    Thomas, Rivers of Gold (2003).

  19. 19.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “Introduction,” in Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2002), pp. 19–20.

  20. 20.

    Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea (2007), pp. 152. See also, by the same author, “La Nacion among the Nations: Portuguese and Other Maritime Trading Diasporas in the Atlantic, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in Richard L. Kagan and Morgan (eds.), Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism , 1500–1800 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2009), pp. 75–49.

  21. 21.

    Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998), pp. 24–31.

  22. 22.

    March 29, 1613, Not. Arch. 258 -fol. 81V, G.A.A.

  23. 23.

    August 15, 1623, Not. Arch. 739. p. 203, G.A.A.

  24. 24.

    Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580–1680 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1971), pp. 152–153. Schouten (1567–1625) was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean. Boudewijn Hendricksz fought the Battle of San Juan (Puerto Rico) in September 1625, which was an engagement of the Eighty Years’ War but was unable to capture it from Spain. Piet Heyn was an admiral and director of the Dutch West India Company who captured the Spanish treasure fleet in 1628 with 4,000,000 ducats of gold and silver (12,000,000 gulden, or florins). That great naval and economic victory provided the Dutch Republic with money to continue its struggle against Spain for control of the Southern or Spanish Netherlands.

  25. 25.

    Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean (1971), p. 164 and p. 182.

  26. 26.

    Wim Klooster, “An Overview of Dutch Trade with the Americas, 1600–1800,” in Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce; Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817 (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2003), pp. 365–383; p. 373; Jonathan I. Israel, “Some Further Data on the Amsterdam Sephardic and Their Trade with Spain during the 1650s,” Studia Rosenthaliana, 14, 1980, pp. 7–19; p. 14. The Canary Islands had been a way station in trade between the Dutch Republic and the Caribbean especially among merchants of the Portuguese Nation since the end of the sixteenth century. After resumption of hostilities following the end of Truce in the Eighty Years’ War in 1621, the islands became an entrepot of supply goods and colonial products traded legally and illegally among the expanding Sephardic merchant network. After 1648, Spain raised concern about the ongoing illegal trade conducted by Sephardic merchants from Amsterdam. See also Jonathan I. Israel, “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim, 1609–1660,” in Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 12, nos. 1/2, July 1978, pp. 1–61.

  27. 27.

    The Dutch established Curacao as their entrepot base from which they conducted most of their trade with the island; see Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean (1971), pp. 52–60; Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches, pp. 74–88.

  28. 28.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, p. 574.

  29. 29.

    Apparently, Simon Caceres was a close contact and a well-established merchant in Bridgetown from 1647 to 1654 who received permission from Cromwell in 1653 to trade tobacco and sugar from Barbados to London (see previous chapter). According to Lucien Wolf, “Cromwell’s Jewish Intelligencers,” Essays in Jewish History (1934), he was involved in Cromwell’s Western Design and likely accompanied Venables and Penn in their expedition of the Caribbean and the invasion of Jamaica. In a memorandum “Things wanting in Jamaica,” written in 1655, he mentions having been on the island. See Lucien Wolf, “American Elements in the Re-settlements,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 3, 1896–1899, pp. 76–100; pp. 97–98 display the document in which Caceres recommends to fortify harbor facilities. See also Jacob Andrade, “The Jews of Jamaica: A Historical View,” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1, 1967, pp. 46–47.

  30. 30.

    Frank W. Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies, 1700–1763 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1917), pp. 14–15; Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution (2004), pp. 178–180.

  31. 31.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, pp. 376–377, with reference to, W.A. Claypole and D.J. Buisseret, “Trade Patterns in Early English Jamaica,” Journal of Caribbean History, V, 1972, pp. 1–19.

  32. 32.

    Reputedly, both Governor Modyford and Governor Lynch were involved in smuggling and illicit trade.

  33. 33.

    The index file on Jamaica in the Notarial Archives at the Municipal Archives of Amsterdam has no records of illicit trade except in a few cases where vessels and cargo were seized and damaged and disputes emerged among merchants and captains as was the case in 1658 when several Dutch vessels were captured at Barbados and taken to Jamaica to be unloaded (July 30, 1658, Not. Arch. 2205/173; November 11, 1658, Not. Arch. 2205, fol. 720; October 21, 1659, Not. Arch. 1131/67–68; December 16, 1659, Not. Arch. 1131/283; and July 15, 1660, Not. Arch. 2208/1054: G.A.A.). In 1671, a record appears in which Sir William Davidson is implicated (November 18 and December 14, 1671, Not. Arch. 3209. fol. 210–211 and fol. 320, G.A.A.). The case concerns an English vessel set to sail for Jamaica but ending up in Virginia. With no reported cargo content, we can only guess who the merchants were and where the goods were loaded. The index file on Jamaica also contains a set of records from 1690, in which Dutch merchants using a Barbados registered vessel owned by Colonel Richard Salter conducted trade with Jamaica. Whereas the merchants were Dutch, the skipper and owner of the vessels were English or colonial residents and trade was conducted via English ports, the goods may have been collected and shipped to or from Amsterdam. No clear evidence of the origin of the trade goods is provided in these records (October 4, 1690, Not. Arch. 5839, G.A.A.).

  34. 34.

    Jacob Joshua Bueno Henriques petitioned in 1661 to be granted denizenship as part of the plan initiated by Sir William Davidson (Wilfred S. Samuel, “Sir William Davidson, Royalist, (1616–1689) and the Jews,” in Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 14, (1935–1939), pp. 39–79). Henriques claimed to have resided on Jamaica in 1658 and 1659.

  35. 35.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, p. 580.

  36. 36.

    Jacob Andrade, A Record of the Jews in Jamaica from the English Conquest to the Present Time (Jamaica Times, Kingston, 1941), p. 2.

  37. 37.

    Andrade, A Record of Jews in Jamaica, 1941, p. 9.

  38. 38.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), pp. 61–62.

  39. 39.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), p. 65.

  40. 40.

    Even with the high risks involved in contraband trade, the Port Royal entrepot reduced shipping and freight charges in half compared to the regular trade between Spain and its colonies according to reports by Port Royal merchants at the time. Zahedieh, “Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, p. 507.

  41. 41.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), p. 62; pp. 154–159.

  42. 42.

    The role of Sephardic merchants in the slave trade with the Spanish colonies is widely debated. In 1703, the Council of Trade and Plantations heard the case of a Jewish merchant who proclaimed that Jews had procured the asiento to be established in Jamaica which promoted the trade between Jamaica and the Spanish West Indies to England’s profit. See Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), pp. 160–161.

  43. 43.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), pp. 63–65, p. 161.

  44. 44.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), p. 81.

  45. 45.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984) claim that the advantage of the Sephardic Jewish merchants derived from their widespread network of trade contacts in the Caribbean region and access to the Curacao entrepot.

  46. 46.

    Samuel, “Sir William Davidson,” 1935–1939, pp. 39–79.

  47. 47.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), pp. 33–37.

  48. 48.

    In 1648, the Eighty Years’ War with Spain had ended and the peace treaty had restored trade relationships with Spain. This opened up new opportunities to trade with the Spanish Colonies. See Klooster, Illicit Riches (1998), pp. 41 ff.

  49. 49.

    Fortune, Merchants and Sugar (1984), pp. 33–38. Sugar was not mentioned as in 1662, when the scheme was conceived, sugar cultivation on the island was not yet realized.

  50. 50.

    In one of the trade records in the Barbados file, Abraham Israel de Pisa contracts with an English skipper from London (April 29, 1669, Not. Arch. 2789/133, G.A.A.).

  51. 51.

    It is likely that any Jamaican Sephardic Jewish merchant records are found in the Curacao archives.

  52. 52.

    January 10, 1692, Not. Arch. 4576A/fol. 241/243, G.A.A.; July 12, 1692, Not. Arch. 4773, G.A.A.; July 8, 1695, Not. Arch. 3873/31, G.A.A.

  53. 53.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, pp. 580–581.

  54. 54.

    John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775 (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1978), pp. 116–131; 234–235.

  55. 55.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, p. 588.

  56. 56.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, p. 589.

  57. 57.

    Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, pp. 592–593.

  58. 58.

    See R.C. Nash, “The Organization of Trade and Finance in the British Atlantic Economy: 1600–1711,” in Peter A. Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, 1600–1820 (University South Carolina Press, Columbia S.C. 2005), pp. 98–99. In Barbados, the system tied in with the Royal African Company’s slave trade where slaves were delivered in return for bills of exchange in value of sugar. There is some question about the extent to which commission and consignment trade was conducted but from evidence presented by Nash (2005) it seems that during the last decade of the seventeenth century a reversal occurred and that by 1700 many Barbados planters reverted to selling their crops on the island rather than in London which restored the role of some of the island merchants, many of whom had ties to the transfer trade.

  59. 59.

    Nuala Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660–1700 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010), pp. 65–75.

  60. 60.

    A good example is Lascelles merchant house, see S.D. Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006).

  61. 61.

    Zahedieh, The Capital and Colonies (2010), pp. 46–48.

  62. 62.

    Zahedieh, The Capital and Colonies (2010), p. 78. The Company accounted for only 5 percent of total sugar imports in 1686. See Kenneth G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London, 1957), pp. 179–181.

  63. 63.

    Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery (1974), pp. 92–95 with reference to A.P. Thornton, West-India Policy Under the Restoration (Oxford, 1956), p. 64. See also Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (W.W. Norton, New York, 1973).

  64. 64.

    Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery (1974), Chapter 10, p. 210–212; K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (Longmans, London 1957), p. 363.

  65. 65.

    See J. Harry Bennett, “Cary Helyar, Merchant and Planter of Seventeenth-Century Jamaica,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1, January 1964, pp. 53–76.

  66. 66.

    Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, pp. 212–213, reference to J. Harry Bennett, Cary Helyar, “Merchant and Planter of Seventeenth-Century Jamaica,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 21, no. 1, 1964, pp. 53–76.

  67. 67.

    Zahedieh, “Trade, Plunder, and Economic Development,” 1986b, pp. 205–222; p. 222.

  68. 68.

    Unpublished PhD thesis; William Claypole, “The Merchants of Port Royal, 1655–1700,” (University of the West Indies, 1974), pp. 174–195 referenced in Zahedieh, “Trade, Plunder and Economic Development,” p. 221.

  69. 69.

    Zahedieh, “Trade, Plunder, and Economic Development,” 1986b, see Table 1, p. 207: Jamaica’s Agricultural Exports, 1671–1678 and 1682–1689. The table documents that between 1678 and 1682 the amount of sugar exported doubled in volume (hogsheads containing 1000 pounds each). In 1682, over 10,000 hogsheads of sugar are exported while indigo and cacao beans ceased to exist as export staples. The data derives from the Naval Office which according to the guidelines of the Navigation Acts provide a record of legal exports. Illegal exports sent directly to Europe or via Curacao are not included. According to Table 8, p. 217, Ships Trading at Port Royal, 1686–1688, no Dutch ships and only very few ships arriving from Curacao are recorded for departure. See also Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 1986, Table 1, p. 577.

  70. 70.

    Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery (1974), pp. 214–216.

  71. 71.

    Zahedieh, “Trade, Plunder, and Development,” 1986b, pp. 210–213.

  72. 72.

    Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies (2010); Nuala Zahedieh, “Making Mercantilism Work: London Merchants and Atlantic Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 9, December 1999, pp. 143–158; and, by the same author, “London and the Colonial Consumer in the Late Seventeenth Century,” The Economic History Review, New Series, vol. 47, no. 2, May 1994, pp. 239–261. The Port Books do not form a complete sequence and several years are missing. Furthermore, widespread contraband and smuggling activities as well as corrupt custom and naval officers render doubt about their usefulness. This in particularly was the case for Jewish merchants engaged in colonial trade. See Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 24, 1970–1973, pp. 38–58.

  73. 73.

    Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: By 1700, colonial trade accounted for a fifth of all recorded imports, with tobacco and sugar accounting for over three-quarters of the value of recorded colonial imports (p. 284), and according to the London Port Books, shipping of colonial goods accounted for 40 percent of London’s total overseas trading capacity in 1686 (p. 287).

  74. 74.

    Nuala Zahedieh, “London and the Colonial Consumer in the Late Seventeenth Century,” The Economic History Review, New Series, vol. 47, no. 2, May 1994, pp. 239–261; Table 4, p. 244.

  75. 75.

    Nuala Zahedieh, “Making Mercantilism Work,” 1999, pp. 143–158.

  76. 76.

    Zahedieh (1999), “Making Mercantilism Work.” See also Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 24, 1970–1973, pp. 38–58. Woolf suggests that among the London Jewish merchants were immigrants from Germany, Holland, and Flanders (p. 47).

  77. 77.

    Zahedieh (1999), “Making Mercantilism Work,” pp. 154–155.

  78. 78.

    Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches: The Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (Leiden, 1995), Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlement in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s,” in Kagan and Morgan (eds.), Atlantic Diasporas (2009), pp. 33–49, and, Jonathan Israel, “Curacao, Amsterdam, and the rise of the Sephardic Trade System in the Caribbean, 1630–1700,” in Gerber (ed.), The Jews in the Caribbean (2014), pp. 29–43.

  79. 79.

    Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, volume 2, (Chapman and Hall, London, 1950), pp. 453–454.

  80. 80.

    Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, The Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1713 (The Hambledon Press, London, 1990), pp. 443–447. The commission trade required agents and consignment correspondents in the various locations where trade was conducted. This form of trade became the predominant form in the sugar import trade in London after the 1680s. See Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies (2010), pp. 79–80.

  81. 81.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “Jews and the Stock Exchange: The Amsterdam Financial Crash of 1688,” in Jonathan Israel, Diasporas within the Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740), pp. 449–487.

  82. 82.

    By 1700, a total of 34 percent of investors in Amsterdam were Jews in both the WIC and VOC; Israel, “Jews and the Stock Exchange,” in Diasporas within the Diaspora, pp. 458–461.

  83. 83.

    Edgar Samuel, “Portuguese Jews in Jacobean London,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 18, 1958, pp. 171–230; and, Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England (TJHSE) 24, 1975, pp. 38–58.

  84. 84.

    Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews,” 1975, p. 48.

  85. 85.

    Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews,” 1975, pp. 38–58; Brazilwood export from Brazil was the monopoly of the King of Portugal, and the Da Costa brothers appear to have been the sole importers to England, likely under contract with the Portuguese King.

  86. 86.

    Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews,” 1975, pp. 50–51.

  87. 87.

    Maurice Woolf, “Foreign Trade of London Jews,” 1975, p. 51.

  88. 88.

    Cwt. or hundredweight is 112 pounds. Nuala Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies (2010), pp. 210–237. Zahedieh “London and the Colonial Consumer in the late Seventeenth Century,” 1994, pp. 239–261; Table 5, p. 246, lists value of sugar imports from Barbados at 329,129 English pounds and from Jamaica at 133,573 English pounds, being 76 percent of total value imported from Jamaica in 1686. See also David Eltis, “New Estimates of Exports from Barbados and Jamaica, 1665–1701,” 1995, pp. 631–648.

  89. 89.

    Eltis, “New Estimates of Exports from Barbados and Jamaica, 1665–1701,” 1995, tables, p. 638 and 639. John J. Mc Cusker, “The business of distilling in the Old World and the New World during the seventeenth and eighteen centuries: the rise of a new enterprise and its connection with colonial America,” in John McCusker and Kenneth Morgan, The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 186–224.

  90. 90.

    Although the mercantilist system through fiscal policies encouraged sugar processing to be carried out by the mother country, the capacity to do so was initially limited and trade and marketing networks dictated that much of the sugar was still refined in Amsterdam despite the fact that fuel costs were higher; see Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies, 2010, pp. 288–289.

  91. 91.

    Nuala Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies (2010), p. 234.

  92. 92.

    David Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), Chapter 6, “The Dutch staple market and the growth of English re-exports,” pp. 181–206, details on reexport of tobacco to the Netherlands but gives no details on the sugar reexport from London.

  93. 93.

    Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies (2010) p. 284, and, Zahedieh, “Making Mercantilism Work,” 1999, p. 143, footnote 2.

  94. 94.

    Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires (2003), footnote 6, p. 182, presents evidence from customs ledgers compiled by Schumpeter, in English Overseas Trade Statistics, Table XVIII, which suggests that by 1700, 70 percent of sugar imports are retained but only 34 percent of tobacco imports are. See also Carole Shammas, “The revolutionary impact of European demand for tropical goods,” Chapter 7, in J. McCusker and K. Morgan (eds.) The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000).

  95. 95.

    These include the Brugmans statistics on import and export for 1667/1668 (see Appendix 2); H. Brugmans “Statistiek van den in- en uitvoer van Amsterdm, 1 October 1667–30 September 1668,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historiswch Genootschap 19, 1898, pp. 125–183; see Victor Enthoven, “An Assessment of Dutch Transatlantic Commerce,” in Postma and Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce (2003), pp. 438, Table 14.14: Atlantic Commodities. See also Barbour, Capitalism in Amsterdam, p. 90, discussed in Chapter 3.

  96. 96.

    Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires (2003), pp. 181–206. The English fiscal system discouraged the development of processing industries, while the Dutch encouraged processing due to low import duties, low interest rates, and low freight rates. Thus, a significant share of England’s export of colonial staples was going toward the finishing industries in Holland. These included sugar refining but also distilleries, see John J. Mc Cusker, “The business of distilling in the Old World and the New World during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the rise of a new enterprise and its connection with colonial America,” in John McCusker and K. Morgan (eds.), The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge University Press, 200).

  97. 97.

    Zahedieh, The Capital and its Colonies (2010), pp. 236–237. Noel Deerr, History of Sugar, volume 2 (1950), pp. 453–454, seems to suggest that Amsterdam was not able to import raw sugar in sufficient amount from the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean in the late seventeenth century to fill the demand of the sugar refineries. Its dependence, therefore, on imports of raw sugar from London makes the explanation of ongoing reexport from London more likely.

  98. 98.

    July 12, 1692, Not. Arch., 4773, G.A.A.

  99. 99.

    See Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches (1998), p. 102. See also, Wim Klooster, “Curacao and the Caribbean Transit Trade,” in Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce: (2003), pp. 203–219.

    According to Klooster, very little is known about the commodities received in transit at Curacao from Amsterdam but textiles were an important part of the incoming trade. In addition, wine, gin, brandy, and beer were received at Curacao for distribution to various destinations. Return cargo included cacao from Venezuela, indigo from Guatamala and Saint Domingue, and sugar from Saint Domingue, Martinique, and Guadeloupe during the period 1726–1755. Coffee was supplied by Martinique and tobacco came predominantly from Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Cuba (1701–1755). Log- and dyewood came from various coastal locations. Apparently, a good share of the sugar transport went through St. Eustatius (see Chap. 7).

  100. 100.

    Jonathan Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989), p. 326. According to Klooster, in “Curacao and the Caribbean Transit Trade,” Postma and Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce (2003), pp. 203–219, 39 percent of all Curacao’s sugar exports to Amsterdam was first transferred to St. Eustatius in the late 1720s.

  101. 101.

    Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York University Press, New York, London, 2010), p. 187.

  102. 102.

    Hayne, An Abstract of all the Statutes (1685), pp. 15–38, reviewed by Christian Koot, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Chesapeake and the British Caribbean, 1621–1733,” in Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman (eds.), Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680–1800 (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2014), pp. 72–99; p. 90.

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    Yda Schreuder

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Schreuder, Y. (2019). Sephardic Merchants and the Second Barbados: Jamaica. In: Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97061-5_6

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