Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

by Edward Kritzler

  24. Anita Libman Lebeson, Pilgrim People (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 43; Wiznitzer, The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community in the New World, 55. The street led to the Jewish Square; there was also a Playa de Judios (Jewish Beach).

  25. Lebeson, Pilgrim People, 43.

  26. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 83.

  27. Ibid., 111.

  28. Jacob Rader Marcus, Early American Jewry, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: KTAV, 1975).

  29. From the top, the figures in this paragraph are quoted from Herbert I. Bloom, “A Study of Brazilian Jewish History 1623–1654, Based Chiefly upon the Findings of the Late Samuel Oppenheim,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 33 (1934), 86; Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 35; ibid., 69–70; Bloom, “A Study,” 100.

  30. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews, 133.

  31. Ibid., 133.

  32. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 84.

  33. Ibid., 72: From 1636 to 1645 the Company brought 23,163 slaves to Brazil, which they sold for 6,714,423 florins. After 1645, owing to the civil war the Company carried the slaves to Curaçao. The 26,000 figure is the estimate of Faber, Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade, 21.

  34. Faber’s Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade uses primary source material, and focuses on the British slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which demonstrates “the minimal nature of Jews’ involvement in the subjugation of Africans in the Americas.”

  35. Wiznitzer, The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community, 22; In 1643, Moses apparently changed professions. He is listed as a tax collector, indicating he had retired from the sea, but not necessarily from his plundering ways.

  36. Ibid.; pages 1–107 reprint (with index) “The Minute Book of Congregations Zur Israel of Recife and Magen Abraham of Mauricia, Brazil.” Invaluable work on these communities and their symbiotic relationship was done by Samuel Oppenheim, Herbert Bloom, and Arnold Wiznitzer. Much primary material is available, including the minute book of Zur Israel for the years 1648–53.

  37. Bloom, “A Study,” 91.

  38. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 74–75.

  39. Adler, “A Contemporary Memorial,” 45; Yosef Kaplan, “The Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam: From Forced Conversion to Return to Judaism,” Studia Rosenthal 15 (1981), 41–42. Quote from trial record: “Esteban de Ares de Fonseca was living in Spain in Pamplona when he met a cousin from Bordeaux…where covert Jews ‘persuaded him to abandon the faith of the Lord Jesus of Nazareth and to adopt the Mosaic religion which is the true one and in which he will be saved.’…He arrived in Amsterdam in 1625 and was greeted by relatives who received him with ‘great joy and told him that these were the wonders of God who brings those who live in the blindness of Christianity to Judaism.’ They immediately began to take care of him in order to turn him into a Jew because (they said) he was the child of a mother of Jewish origin. When he saw this, he did not want to be circumcised or become a Jew and they placed him in the company of a rabbi to persuade him to observe (this religion) and after he spent six months with him and could not persuade him, they excommunicated him so that no Jew would come in contact with him or speak with him. After 15 or 16 days in that position in which nobody spoke to him or helped him, he went (to them) and they agreed to circumcise him. After circumcising him they named him David.” Kaplan writes: “It is doubtful we can rely on this as he sought to clear himself and present his conversion in Amsterdam as an act that was forced upon him against his will.”

  40. Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 61; Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 88; Bloom, “A Study,” 90.

  41. Contraband trade via Amsterdam was so popular that in 1662 Spanish trading galleons, despite a two-year absence from the New World, went home with their holds half full.

  42. Dutch territory in northeast Brazil included the provinces of Pernambuco, Itamaraca, Paraíba, and Rio Grande do Norte.

  43. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 88–89 (transcript of letter in Wiznitzer’s appendix).

  44. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews, 138, 138n.

  45. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 93.

  46. Ibid., 116–17.

  47. Ibid., 95–96.

  48. Bloom, “A Study,” 94.

  49. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 98.

  50. I. S. Emmanuel, “New Light on Early American Jewry,” American Jewish Archives 8 (1955), 11.

  51. Ibid., 9–13: Abraham da Costa was the head of the Parnassim who signed the petition that resulted in the Patenta Onrossa. He was the younger brother of Uriel, who had killed himself after renouncing his heretic beliefs, and elder brother to Joseph, who would later refer to the Patenta Onrossa in the struggle to achieve civil rights in New Amsterdam.

  52. Ibid., 43–44.

  53. Arnold Wiznitzer, “Jewish Soldiers in Dutch Brazil (1630–1654),” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 46 (September 1956), 46.

  54. Ibid., 48.

  55. Bloom, “A Study,” 126.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Ibid., 137.

  58. Ibid., 130–31.

  59. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 108–9, 210: text of King John’s reply.

  60. Roth, A History of the Marranos, 306: Portugal’s reconquest of Brazil was due in large part to him. Da Silva “provided ships, supplies, and munitions to the army.” After he was accused of judaizing, his trial dragged on for five years. Da Silva was finally freed after he appeared as a pentitent, and in 1662, the king sent him to England with Catherine of Braganza to administer her dowry. Though he remained in London, he never joined the now legal Jewish community.

  61. Bloom, “A Study…” 136–37.

  62. Simon Wolf, The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen (Boston: Gregg Press, 1972), 449.

  63. Wiznitzer, The Records of the Earliest Jewish Community, 55n44.

  64. Liebman, “The Great Conspiracy in Peru,” 176–90; Liebman, The Jews in New Spain, 225–35.

  65. They could settle in the six small Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, St. Eustacius, and St. Martin, and although France and England were still off-limits, they were welcome in the French Caribbean islands Guadaloupe and Martinque, and the English colonies Barbados and Nevis.

  Chapter Seven: Exodus to Heretic Island

  1. Arnold Wiznitzer, “The Exodus from Brazil and Arrival in New Amsterdam of the Jewish Pilgrim Fathers in 1654,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 44 (Philadelphia, September 1954), 80–97.

  2. Captain Thomas Southey, Chronological History of the West Indies (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1968; reprint of 1827 edition): In 1568, the Crown accused the current heir, Don Luis Colón, of “blocking an investigation into charges the Admiral had used his private jurisdiction on Jamaica to cover illegal trade.” The charge was he imported more goods than the island needed for the sole purpose of exporting them to other colonies. This was in violation of the mercantile system that mandated first profits to the homeland, i.e., all goods had to come and go via Seville. Richard Bloome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica with the other Isles and Territories in America in which English are Related (London, 1672), 44: When the English conquered Jamaica, “the number of inhabitants did not exceed 3,000 of which half were slaves. And the reason why it was so thinly peopled was…chiefly because this isle was held in proprietorship by the heirs of Columbus who received the revenues and placed governors as absolute Lord of it. And at first it was planted by a kind of Portugals, the society of whom the Spaniard abhors.”

  3. Francis J. Osborne, History of the Catholic Church in Jamaica (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988), 84: The synod decreed the Jamaican abbot should come under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Santo Domingo on February 15, 1624.

  4. Frank Cundall and Joseph Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, abstracted from the Archives of Seville (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1919), 17: Migue
l Delgado, one of the Portugals who founded La Vega (Spanish Town) in 1534, was lieutenant governor in 1583; Morales, Spanish Jamaica, 86: Diego de Mercado ruled from 1583 to 1597. Prominent Jamaicans who bore those names were all of Jewish ancestry. See Jacob Andrade, A Record of the Jews of Jamaica (Kingston: Jamaica Times, 1941).

  5. Cundall and Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, 21, 26.

  6. Ibid., 30.

  7. Ibid., 30–31.

  8. Ibid., 17–34. Melgarejo’s thirst for power exceeded his authority. Though loyal to the Crown, he had no qualms about feathering his own nest. After Philip II’s death in 1604, six merchants petitioned Philip III, accusing the governor of corruption, and “prayed he might be recalled.” They alleged he traded with foreign ships and pirates, “while taking for himself and his lieutenants all negroes and merchandise which entered the island.” However, the king was pleased with Melgarejo’s performance and appointed him to another term. When Melgarejo left office, Philip III, “on the petition of the people of Jamaica,” pardoned the illicit traders.

  9. Ibid., 24.

  10. Ibid., 47, 48: Jamaica’s governor tried, without success “to take from Francisco de Leyba Ysazi [sic] a tannery he has on the river which cause a lot of sickness being so near the town.”

  11. Osborne, History of the Catholic Church in Jamaica, Appendix C, 445–76, lists the synod decrees. Don Nuño’s abbot, Mateo de Moreno, attended the synod, but the novice prelate was outmaneuvered by forces aligned against the Columbus family.

  12. Cundall and Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, 44–45; S.A.G. Taylor, The Western Design: An Account of Cromwell’s Expedition to the Caribbean (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica and Jamaican Historical Society, 1969), 74.

  13. Robert F. Marx, Treasure Fleets of the Spanish Main (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1968), 4–5. Charles impatiently waited for the galleons: “The importance of the treasure from the New World to Spain can be readily understood from the following dispatch sent by the Venetian ambassador in Spain to the doge in September 1567:…‘there was great anxiety all over Spain over the delay of the arrival of the treasure fleet from the Indies and, when the Genoese bankers informed the King that unless the fleet reached port shortly, that they would be unable to negotiate any further loans for him, Philip II fell into such a state of shock that he had to be confined to bed by his physicians…I am happy to inform you that news has just arrived from Seville that the fleet has made port safely and there is now great rejoicing not only here in the Royal Court, but all over the land as well.’”

  14. Irwin R. Blacker, ed., “The English Voyages of Sir Anthony Shirley,” cited in Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1598–1600, vol. 3, 601 (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 294.

  15. Shannon Miller, Invested with Meaning: The Raleigh Circle in the New World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 158.

  16. Robert Lacey, Sir Walter Raleigh (New York: Athenaeum Press, 1974), 344–45: James handed Gondomar “a precise inventory of Raleigh’s ships, armaments, ports of call and estimated dates of arrival.”

  17. Antonia Fraser, King James VI of Scotland, I of England, (New York: Random House, 1975), 375: “Gondomar demanded…an immediate audience with James. Assuming a lofty and insolent tone, he declared the King could not judge Raleigh as he had commissioned him and was surrounded by his friends. Rather Raleigh and his captains were pirates and must be sent in chains to Madrid to be hanged in the main square. James, angered by his friend’s audacity, threw his hat on the floor, clutched his hair, and shouted that might be justice in Spain but not in England. Gondomar sneered that there was indeed a difference between England and Spain in regards to piracy, and abruptly left the room. Buckingham, who had been present, sided with Gondomar.” Philip Gibbs, The Reckless Duke: The Romantic Story of the First Duke of Buckingham and the Stuart Court (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931), 76: “[Gondomar’s] most insolent demands had a tone of imperial dignity. His manner was that of a man who moved the world. His confidence in himself and in his country gave strength to his diplomacy and majesty to his deportment.” Coffin, The Dukes of Buckingham, 71–72: After Raleigh’s beheading, Gondomar and the king made friends. Next to Buckingham, Gondomar was “the most frequent visitor to the King’s bed-chamber” 73: “Although Gondomar had captivated James, beyond Whitehall he was despised. Once, while passing a group of Englishmen in the litter that Buckingham had made the vogue, Gondomar was cursed by one who shouted, ‘There goeth the Devil in a dung cart!’” Fraser concludes (p. 375): He was “perhaps the most influential foreign ambassador ever to reside in England…With a folly bordering on madness James admitted to intimacy the most dangerous man with whom he ever had to deal.”

  18. Most references to Columbus’s gold mine in Jamaica are found in Lord Clarendon’s papers kept at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library: Clarendon State Papers, vol. 1, no. 237, 14. Clarendon’s transcription of Hermyn’s “secret discoveries” includes a coded invasion plan of Jamaica, cryptic references to the location of the secret gold mine, and the promise by local “Portingals” to reveal this to their liberator.

  19. Clarendon State Papers, vol. 1, no. 237, 14.

  20. Roth, A History of the Marranos, 246. Although she said she would sooner enter a convent than marry a heretic, it is interesting to note “her confessor, Fra. Vincente de Rocamora, a Dominican friar famous for his ‘piety and eloquence,’ disappeared from Spain in 1643 and shows up in Amsterdam, under the name of Isaac, studying medicine and playing a prominent part in the general life of the Jewish community.”

  21. J. H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares, The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 232: “The most perfidious of all heretics condemned by the church—namely the Jews” see page 10 for Olivares’s Jewish ancestry.

  22. Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas Within a Diaspora, Crypto Jews and the World’s Maritime Empires (1540–1740), Brill Series in Jewish Studies, ed. David S. Katz (Boston, 2002), 148: Olivares’ economic plan to recruit Portuguese conversos “had much to do with the absence of specific measures against Portuguese New Christians in the Indies in 1624.” Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1713 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990): Accepting Olivares’s invitation, more than four thousand Portuguese conversos settled in Seville and Madrid. Among them was Moses Cohen Henriques, who figures later in the Columbus gold mine venture. By 1640, the Portuguese expatriates in Seville constituted nearly a quarter of the population. “They had grown rich on legal and illegal trade, lived bejeweled lives, dressed in fancy clothes…Their ostentatious life style aroused the resentment of the Spanish merchants who viewed the Portuguese as nouveau riche foreigners. The Portuguese conversos occupied positions that made them easy to hate.

  “Olivares’ opponents said he had invited the wolves into the hen house…His financial advisor was a prominent ex-Jew from Amsterdam, and his council was dubbed his sinogoga… Right before his downfall, Olivares’ own converso heritage was exposed. The king…threatened that should he return to court, ‘the public will not be appeased unless you are turned over to the Inquisition.’ With this change in climate, the grudging tolerance the conversos were accorded came to an end. Most of the community Olivares fathered soon departed for freer lands. For five years, Olivares kept the Inquisition at bay. In the free trade atmosphere of new business and fresh capital, Spain prospered. Innovative Portuguese letters of exchange and credit made capital portable and goods transportable to ports everywhere. But in the end, the Inquisition triumphed. An auto da fe on July 4, 1632 signaled the end to Olivares’ scheme. Olivares looked on as six Portuguese confessed to judaizing… The Grand Inquisitor, from atop a platform at one end of the square, condemned the six (four men and two women) to the quemadero (the burning place)…later that month the nephews of Olivares’ financial advisor disappeared into the secret cells of the Inquisition
. Months later they…confessed under torture to judaizing. The message was clear: Spain was not ready to bring back her Jews.”

  23. Using Jamaica as his base, he intended to recruit additional settlers from the French islands and capture the rest of Spain’s New World empire. Sweden’s account of the treaty is found in Aron Rydfors, De diplomatiska forbindelserna mellan Sverige och England 1624–1630 (Uppsala: 1890), 100–113, trans. on request by Hans Linton, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stockholm.

  24. Cundall and Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, 39–40.

  25. V. T. Harlow, “The Voyages of Captain William Jackson 1642–1645,” Camden Miscellany 13 (1923), 19.

  26. Ibid., 20–21.

  27. Cundall and Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, 40: In October 1643, Governor Francisco Ladron de Zegama “died a prisoner without guards in his own house.”

  28. John Taylor, Taylor’s History of his Life and Travels in America and other parts, with An Account with the most remarkable Transactions which Annuallie happened in his daies, vol. 2 (1688). See John Robertson, “An Untimely Victory: Reinventing the English Conquest of Jamaica in the 17th Century,” English Historical Review 117 (2002), 14: “In St. Mary, the Spanish settlers built a nunnery to mark their victory in a civil war with their Portuguese fellow colonists.”

  29. Bryan Edwards, History of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol. 2 (London: John Stockdale Pickadilly, 1801), 193. “The Jealousy occasioned by the revolution which had placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne of Portugal, caused the expulsion of almost all the colonists of that nation. When the British forces entered Spanist Town, they found 2000 houses but few inhabitants. The deserted house in the capital proved the want of tenants. This was due to the expulsion of Portuguese settlers.”

  30. Carol S. Holzberg, Minorities and Power in a Black Society: The Jewish Community of Jamaica (Lanham, Md.: North-South Publishing, 1987), 16n: “15 or 20 years before British invasion…13 Portuguese families were expelled.”