Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2017
Recent historians have highlighted the importance of the web of illicit commercial transactions which connected competing imperial networks to create an integrated Atlantic economy but have paid little attention to how co-operation worked across borders. Of necessity, participants acted without the legal institutions which are often afforded a central role in narratives of modernization. In the case of Jamaica, a hub of illicit trade, most merchants found it difficult to survive in this high-risk environment but members of the Sephardic diaspora, a traditional, communitarian group, had competitive advantages which they exploited with vigour. They did not rely on innate attributes of kinship, ethnicity, or religion. They closed entry and built on a favourable historical and geographical legacy to cultivate attributes which maintained high levels of social discipline with credible rewards and punishments which were reinforced by their outsider status. Their competitive advantages did stimulate retaliation but also allowed the Sephardim to combine with the Christian elite to capture rent-seeking opportunities. Far from falling away as modernization gained pace, the Sephardic diaspora survived and flourished by constructing the strong private-order institutions needed in large swathes of the economy where neither impersonal corporations, nor state enforcement mechanisms, were able to manage risk.
Earlier versions of the article were given at seminars at the Huntington Library, CA, the Institute of Historical Research, London, the University of Edinburgh, and the British Group of Early American Historians. The author is grateful for helpful discussion on each occasion. The author is also grateful to Christian Koot and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments.
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112 Petition to Thomas Lynch, 1672, TNA CO 1/28, no. 63; Zahedieh, ‘Capture of the Blue Dove’; Perara and Gomezsera v. Calloway, 25 Sept. 1672, TNA HCA 13/77.
113 Gelfand, ‘Transatlantic approach’, pp. 379, 381; Andrade, Record.
114 Inventory of Joseph da Costa Alveringa, 1 Aug. 1700, NAJ, Inv. 1B/ii/3, vol. 5, fos. 44–5; Richard Brown v. Andrew Lopez and Co., HCA 13/82; Yogev, Diamonds and coral, p. 36.
115 Will of Isaac Rodriquez Marques, 5 Oct. 1707, in Herschowitz, Leo, Wills of early New York Jews, 1704–1799 (New York, NY, 1967), pp. 8–10 Google Scholar; Rock, Howard B., New York Jews in the New World, 1654–1865 (New York, NY, 2013), p. 129Google Scholar.
116 Herschowitz, Wills.
117 Hancock, Oceans of wine. Abraham and Diego Gonzalez's correspondence with the New York merchant Nathan Simson shows that they also had strong links with Amsterdam, Barbados, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Curacao, St Eustatius, St Thomas, and the Iberian empires as well as London. Simson papers, TNA C 104/14.
118 On effects of itineracy in managing opportunism in long-distance trade, Costa, Leonor Freire, Rocha, Maria Manuela, and Araujo, Tanya, ‘Social capital and economic performance: trust and distrust in eighteenth-century gold shipments from Brazil’, European Review of Economic History, 15 (2010), pp. 1–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
119 Simson papers, TNA C 104/14; Cohen, Robert, ‘Sampson and Jacob Mears, merchants’, Jewish Historical Quarterly, 67 (1978), pp. 233–45Google Scholar. The inscription on the tomb of Solomon Levy of 5 Aug. 1690 noted that Levy was born in Germany. Barnett and Wright, Tombstone inscriptions.
120 Jessica Roitman, ‘Us and them: inter-cultural trade and the Sephardim, 1595–1640’ (Ph.D. thesis, Leiden, 2009).
121 Memorial of the Jews enclosed with letter from Beeston to Lords of Trade, 3 May 1700, TNA CO 138/10, fo. 80; response of the Council to the Petition of the Jews, 1700, TNA CO 138/10, fo. 86; JAJ, i, p. 257, ii, pp. 392, 541.
122 Long, History, i, pp. 79–100.
123 Houston, Memoirs, pp. 79–100.
124 Abraham and Diego Gonzalez to Simson, 1725, Simson papers, TNA C 104/14.
125 Cohen, ‘Sampson and Jacob Mears’, p. 234. A sample of thirty Admiralty cases relating to Jamaica between 1674 and 1696 includes four involving Jews but no cases of Jews suing Jews. TNA HCA 13/77–82.
126 Fifteen Jewish wills provide an insight into family discipline. Island Record Office, Spanish Town, Wills, Liber 17, 18.
127 Richman, Barak, ‘How community institutions create economic advantage: Jewish diamond merchants in New York’, Law and Social Inquiry, 31 (2006), pp. 383–420 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
128 The Halls traded with Cardoza, Gomez, Gonzalez, de Leon, Narbona, Nunez, and da Silva Solis. Brailsford papers, TNA C 110/152.
129 Houston, Memoirs, p. 277.
130 Council of Jamaica, 1700, TNA CO 138/10, fos. 80–6.
131 Kaplan, Yosef, ‘The place of the Herem in the Sefardic community of Hamburg during the seventeenth century’, in Seudemund-Halevy, Michael and Koj, Peter, eds., Die Sefarden in Hamburg: Zur geschichte einer meinheit (Hamburg, 1994)Google Scholar; Swetschinski, Daniel, Reluctant cosmopolitans: the Portuguese Jews of seventeenth-century Amsterdam (London, 2000)Google Scholar.
132 Francis Hall to Thomas Brailsford, 11 Mar. 1688/9, 20 Jan. 1689/90, Brailsford papers, TNA C 110/152.
133 Brailsford papers, TNA C 110/152; Simson papers, TNA C 104/14.
134 Beeston to Lords of Trade, TNA CO 138/10, fo. 85; petition to Sir Thomas Lynch, 1672, TNA CO 1/28, no. 65.
135 ‘Act declaring what persons shall be qualified to sit in Assemblies’, 1711, JAJ, ii, p. 38.
136 Memo of Jews about taxes, 3 May 1700, TNA CO 138/10, fo. 80.
137 Samuel, ‘Sir William Davidson’; Lynch to Arlington, 17 Dec. 1671, TNA 1/27, fo. 167; Zahedieh, ‘Regulation, rent-seeking’. Lawes to Lords of Trade, 21 June 1718, TNA CO 137/13, pt 1, no. 14. In the 1720s, the Assembly claimed that the trade on the coast had been engrossed by the men-of-war in association with the leading Jewish supercargoes. Isaac Lamego had been concerned in about ten voyages with Captain Lawes and three or four with Captain Dent. This had been to the detriment of smaller traders who had been excluded. JAJ, ii, pp. 338, 482–3.
138 Wood put forward a petition in support of the Jews with ninety-two signatures of which fifty were from Christians. William Wood to Lords of Trade, 18 Feb. 1736, TNA CO 137/22, fo. 35.