Text | Miller's cat
Editor|Miller's Cat
Sephardi and Dutch merchants and the ability to obtain trade permits for the "Achimto" of the Spanish American colonies were directly related to the political-military events in Europe and the Atlantic region at the end of the 16th century.
After Portugal was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire in 1580, Spain introduced legal reforms to the system of supplying slaves to the American colonies and enacted new laws regarding the presence of foreigners in these areas, which gave Portuguese merchants the opportunity to enter the Spanish "Asimto" trade, thus having the legal right to supply slave labor to Spanish America.
According to Postma, Voss and others, when Dutch merchants began their economic activities in the South Atlantic in 1590, they mainly invested in sugar in Brazil and the gold, ivory and leather trade in Africa, and in the early stages of the trade, the Dutch participated little in the slave trade.
In the early stages of the Dutch transatlantic slave trade, it was mainly carried out by Sephardi Jews in Amsterdam. According to notarized contracts from the Amsterdam City Archives, some ships traveled from the Netherlands to West Africa, passing through Brazil, the Spanish West Indies, Jamaica and Martinique in the Caribbean, and Guyana, before returning to Europe to transport slaves.
These voyages were mainly organized by members of the Portuguese Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam and other Dutch port cities, such as the family of Diogo Neunés Belmonte and his companions Miguel de Espinosa and Pedro Gómez de Lisbon, who organized several commercial voyages between 1610 and 1620, with a commercial network of Iberia, Guinea, Angola, Brazil and the Spanish West Indies.
In these activities, Dutch merchants appeared mainly as insurers for Sephardic Jews. In 1614, Belmont insured slaves transported on a ship named Degel Michiel, as well as gold, silver, and other commodity cargoes.
The Dutch transatlantic slave trade began to develop rapidly after the establishment of the West India Company, especially when the Dutch established their rule in Brazil, with the rapid development of sugar plantations, the demand for slaves increased, and the financial and transportation prerequisites of the slave trade were solved, which became the catalyst for the Dutch to join the slave trade.
Because the complex operation of the slave trade required large capital inputs, free traders could hardly operate as individual enterprises and needed to organize trading companies to succeed. After the establishment of the Dutch West India Company, the slave trade of Sephardic Jews was particularly active in the colonies of Dutch Brazil and in the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curaçao and Suriname.
The slave trade under the monopoly of the Dutch West India Company, and many profits were used for war, which was quite serious.
Due to the military nature of the West India Company, which interrupted trading activities in many regions, and in the years following its takeover of the northeastern states of Brazil, the company failed to ensure the regular supply of slave labor to Dutch Brazil, the company lacked cash flow in Brazil, and in an effort to ensure the transportation of goods, men and weapons, and reduce losses, the West India Company allowed shareholders to participate in Brazilian and Caribbean trade in 1638.
In the slave trade, companies controlled the number of slaves imported in order to maintain high prices for slaves and secure profits. But between 1636 and 1645, more than 23,000 slaves were still transported to Recife.
Brazilian sugar plantation owners brought in thousands of slaves from the Portuguese colony of Angola each year, but the slave trade was almost entirely controlled by Portuguese contractors and Hanfardi Jewish merchants with legal slave contracts and concessions from Portugal.
The West India Company monopolized slaves imported from Africa and sold them at public auctions, demanding payment in cash, and the Portuguese who dominated sugar cultivation in Brazil did not have much cash to buy slaves, most of the cash was in the hands of Jews, so the buyers who appeared at auction were almost all Jews, and due to the lack of competitors, they could buy slaves at low prices, which made many slaves flow into the hands of Jewish speculators.
In the Dutch transatlantic slave trade, Sephardi Jews figured prominently in the marine insurance business. The Hanfardi Jews of Amsterdam were the link between the Portuguese in obtaining the insurance they had purchased in the Dutch Republic. They are often business partners of merchants who operate in Portugal as well as other overseas settlements in Portugal.
Sephardi Jews would use their connections with Portuguese merchants to transport goods and insurance ships to Amsterdam. The establishment of the West India Company partly discouraged this private insurance business, but they developed strategies to continue operating in the Atlantic, such as using passports from non-Dutch cities, allowing captains to go to ports outside the Republic, and directing bulk cargo to trade slaves, ivory, and other goods outside the West India Company's jurisdiction.
This avoids detection, threats or confiscation of vessels and cargo by the company. This tactic was not only adopted by Sephardic Jewish merchants in the Netherlands, but also by Christian merchants in the Netherlands.
The West India Company's monopoly on slavery did not last long during the Dutch Brazilian period, and after 1640, more and more Dutch and Sephardic Jewish merchants established contact with the company to ensure the supply of enslaved Africans to Brazil and other parts of the Americas, as well as goods, food, ammunition, and medicine.
However, the Hanfardi Jewish merchants in Amsterdam no longer seemed to be directly engaged in the slave trade, and they began to become mainly buyers and holders of shares in the West India Company. In Amsterdam's investment in the slave trade, commercial and financial activities were often combined, with the first choice for investment being primarily trade, and financial investment mainly as a complement to commerce.
Dutch Sephardic Jews were most closely associated with the slave trade in their ties with Jews based in the Dutch colonies and Dutch plantation owners, and over time Sephardic Jews were indirectly involved in the slave trade in the form of financial instruments, while Dutch merchants were at the forefront of the slave trade business.
Following in the footsteps of Sephardic Jewish merchants of Portuguese origin, these Dutch merchants extended the slave trade not only to Brazil, but also to areas controlled by the Republic, such as the Gold Coast, Angola, the Río de la Plata, especially Curacao and Suriname in the Caribbean and Spanish America.
The islands of Curaçao and Suriname in the Caribbean were important entrepots for the Dutch transatlantic slave trade. Despite the collapse of Dutch Brazil in 1654 and the dissolution of the Jewish community in Recife, the Sephardian Jews of the Netherlands retained a large part of their newly established ties with the Americas, and many immigrated to the Caribbean after 1640 to resettle.
The Caribbean became the second pillar of Jewish economic activity in the Dutch Sefady. Beginning in the late fifties of the seventeenth century, a large number of Sephardi Jews began to settle in Curaçao, and they dominated trade with Spanish America through their interaction with the local Portuguese neo-Christian community.
By 1702, there were about 600 Dutch Sephardi Jewish communities on Curacao, accounting for 34.5% of the island's taxable wealth. In a 1788 historical essay entitled "On the Colony of Suriname", it was described that "David Nassy, with his family and companions, had become accustomed to the climate and agricultural labor of Brazil" and decided to redefine it in Suriname, because the craze for establishing colonies in the New World was widespread.
After the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), Suriname became a Dutch colony in 1667 and later became an important entrepot for the Dutch transatlantic slave trade.
The significant expansion of the transatlantic slave trade in the Netherlands occurred mainly in the seventeenth century, especially in the forties of the seventeenth century. Some have described the phenomenon as an "explosion of the slave trade" and "a trickle turned into a flood." Of course, this description may be exaggerated, and growth was mainly limited to specific regions, such as the Dutch Brazilian colony.
It is clear that the spread of sugar farming from Brazil to the Caribbean became a key factor in the slave trade and the rise of the sugar revolution. The development of the slave population on the island of Barbados in the West Indies clearly illustrates this trend. In 1641, there were only a few hundred slaves in the island's population, but four years later, the slave population increased to about 6,000. Jews were involved not only in the transatlantic slave trade, but also in the plantation economy of the Americas, becoming plantation owners.
According to census data on Barbados, there were 163 slaves in 54 Jewish families in Bridgetown, the island's capital, or about 11.3% of the total number of slaves there, indicating that Jews had a certain influence in the slave trade in the Dutch colonies, but this influence was more dominant than the Jewish trade, and Christian traders were more dominant in the transatlantic slave trade in the Netherlands.
The traditional Dutch trade frontier was mainly limited to the route from the Iberian Peninsula to the Baltic Sea, and Dutch expansion in the Atlantic was geopolitically more difficult than in the East.
The maritime hegemony of Spain and Portugal in the transatlantic region has a history of nearly a hundred years since the great geographical discovery, and the Netherlands needs a breakthrough in order to shake the colonial hegemony of Spain and Portugal in the transatlantic region and break the Dutch trade border in the Atlantic region.
In addition to the decisive factor in the growth of Dutch maritime military power at the end of the 16th century, soft power, dominated by commercial penetration, is also a factor that cannot be underestimated.
The arrival of Sephardic Jews in the historical diaspora has formed unprecedented mobility and extensive trade networks, and has a unique role in commercial immigration and cross-regional connections, and the arrival of Sephardic Jews has broken the traditional trade borders of the Netherlands.
Sephardic Jews were able to successfully establish extensive and resilient trade networks in the 16th century, with complex transitions and adaptations.
The Jews who were expelled by the Spanish Inquisition did not choose to leave the Iberian Peninsula to facilitate long-distance trade, but this process led to the Diasporama of Iberian Jews in various port cities in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds, which later opened up the possibility of Saffardic commercial trade between various places.
The commercial trade network of Sephardi Jews began first in the trading diaspora such as Europe and the Near East. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the Near East and the Balkans, Sephardic Jews first passed through Venice and the Adriatic ports of Italy and became the main trade intermediaries between the Ottoman Empire in the Near East and Christendom.
This was mainly due to the Ottoman state policy. The Ottoman Empire became politically suspicious of Greek and Italian Christians and had a power entanglement with Christian merchants.
After an influx of Sephardic refugees from Iberia into the Ottoman Empire, settling in Thessaloniki, Constantinople, and soon Greece and the Balkans, they spoke Spanish, easily adapted Italian, and were able to read the Latin alphabet, making it easier to form lasting commercial ties in the West.
This commercial connection was particularly evident in Ferrara, Ancona, Florence in Italy and Antwerp in southern the Netherlands, and by the end of the 16th century, due to the influence of the international political, economic and military situation in Western Europe, Antwerp's commercial links were transferred to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Venice in Italy and Livorno in Tuscany, Italy, and became the main commercial contact places in Sephardi.
Sephardic Jews active in Livorno occupied an important position in maritime trade in the Mediterranean and the Indian subcontinent, and indirectly participated in transatlantic trade, becoming a representative of intercultural trade between medieval Europe and the Mediterranean.
Bibliography:
1. Zhang Schuler: A History of the Netherlands, Taipei: Sanmin Books Co., Ltd., 2012.
2. Gu Weimin, History of the Portuguese Maritime Empire (1415-1825), Shanghai: Social Sciences Press, 2018.
3. Rao Benzhong, Jews and European Civilization, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 2015, p. 87.
4. Gu Weimin, "History of the Inquisition of the Portuguese Ocean Empire (1536-1821)," Journal of East China Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), No. 1, 2017.