¹ Santos, Maria Emília Madeira, ed., História Geral de Cabo Verde (vols. 2-3, Lisbon/Praia, 1995–2002)Google Scholar; Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrão, “Actividade comercial externa de Cabo Verde: organização, funcionamento, evolução” in ibid., vol.1; idem., “Rotas comerciais, agentes económicos, meios de pagamento”, in ibid., vol. 2; idem., “Trâfico de escravos entre a Costa da Guiné e a América Espanhola. Articulação dos impérios ultramarinos ibéricos num espaço atlântico, 1466-1595” (Dissertation to research assistant degree, Lisbon, 1999); Soares, Maria João, “Para uma compreensão dos Lançados nos Rios de Guiné. Século XVI—meados do século XVII,” Studia 56/5 (2000), 147–222Google Scholar; idem, and M. E. Madeira Santos, “Igreja, missionação e sociedade,” in Historia Geral de Cabo Verde 2:359-508.

₂ A noteworthy exception is the late Paul Hair, who made available annotated translations of several important primary sources, including Almada and Donelha, and whose numerous articles in Africana Research Bulletin provide access to works by Barreira and other authors. See also Rodney, Walter, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (New York, 1980)Google Scholar. In addition Boulègue, Jean, e.g., in Les Luso-Africains de la Sénégambie (Lisbon, 1989)Google Scholar makes use of lusophone sources. de Moraes, Nize Isabel, A la découverte de la Petite Côte au XVIIe siècle (3 vols.: Dakar, 1993–1998)Google Scholar, provides documents and commentary for francophone scholars. George Brooks has worked continously on Luso-Africans, also making use of Portuguese sources: see his recent Eurafricans in Western Africa. Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Athens, 2003)Google Scholar.

³ See Mark, Peter, ‘Portuguese’ Style and huso-African Identity, precolonial Senegambia, sixteenth - nineteenth centuries (Bloomington: Indiana, 2002)Google Scholar; see also Horta, José da Silva, “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’: Produção textual e representçõmes (1578-1684)” (Doctoral dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa, 2002)Google Scholar, and idem., “Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in ‘Portuguese’ Accounts on ‘Guinea of Cape Verde’ (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries),” HA 27(2000), 99-130.

⁴ Moraes' research reveals that a Portuguese synagogue existed in Rufisque on the northern Petite Côte about 1629, but no details were available in her sources. In fact she collected some information about the presence of Portuguese Jews on the Petite Côte, but complained that “Malheureusement, l'activité juive à la côte de Guinée supérieure reste mal connue.” Moraes, N.I., “Le commerce des peaux à la Petite Côte au XVIIe siècle (Sénégal),” Notes Africaines 34 (April 1972), 38Google Scholar.

⁵ “Puerto dali “may also be transcribed as “Portodale.” It also appears in Portuguese documents as “Porto d'Ale” or “Porto de Ale” or “Porto de Ali.”

⁶ The manuscript, quoted below, of Madrid (coeval and with the same handwriting as the above quoted) reads “hasta cien” (i.e., almost 100).

⁷ “all[i]” in the Manuscript of Madrid.

⁸ Unpublished mss: ca. 1607 or 1608 from Sebastião .Fernandes Cação, untitled [Relacion de todo el distrito de Guinea y gouierno de Caboberde ]: Biblioteca da Ajuda (Lisbon), cód. 51-IX-25, f. 87-90v.., [Madrid], [s.d.], fls. 87v. See another manuscript of the same account, Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), Jesuitas, t. 185, n° [16]; the punctuation and capital letters are ours; For the dating, title reconstitution, and attribution of authorship to Sebastião Fernandes Cação, see Horta, , “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’,” 480–83Google Scholar.

⁹ The Jesuit Baltasar Barreira used Cação as an informant about Porto de Ale in ca. 1606 (see the sources quoted in Horta, , “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’,” 463–65Google Scholar). For the rest we can only guess the date from the general historical context and chronology of the arrival of Dutch ships.

¹⁰ For the career of Sebastião Fernandes Cação see Horta, “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’,” 101, 140–41Google Scholar.

¹¹ So frequent was the contact that in Cacheu the Joal-Porto de Ale region was commonly called “a Costa” (the coast). See the petition of António da Silva Cota (or Quota), born in Alvito and temporarily living in Guinea to the visitador-geral of Guinea (the representative of the bishop of Cape Verde) to be sent to the Lisbon Inquisition, 7 October 1616: National Archives, Torre do Tombo (henceforth TT), Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 210, f. 454-54v. and the statement of the Gomes, Jesuit Sebastião, Causas pera não poder estar a Companbia na ilha de Santiago de Cabo Verde / Causas pera estar a Companhia no Cabo Verde ([Santiago], 1629)Google Scholar: TT, Cartório dos Jesuítas, Maço 36, n° 89, published in Bràsio, António, Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental, 2d ser., 3:233Google Scholar.

¹² The name of the Wolof king of “Lanbahia” (i.e., Lambaia, Bawol) is mentioned in a letter written to him by the visitador. The letter is extant in TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 296-96v. The visit of the above mentioned Portuguese to the teeñ, who lived in Lambaia in the hinterland, 18 to 20 leagues from the coast, is documented by a certificate signed by them (f. 294-95). About the historical importance of the data of these documents see Horta, , “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’,” 490–91Google Scholar.

¹³ La Fleur, J. D., ed., Pieter Van Den Broecke's Journal of Voyages to Cape Verde, Guinea and Angola, 1605-1612 (London, 2000), 71.Google Scholar See Brooks, Eurafricans, 84-87. Inquisition records in 1612 document the presence of more than 16 Jews.

¹⁴ The “auto de informação” and other contempoary inquiries of testimonies are in TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, filling ff. 579 to 614. A precious digest of this “auto de informação,” systematizing the available information about the accused, one by one, is in f. 576-77.

¹⁵ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 576. “Some men of the nation of New Christians came from the states of Flanders to the coast of Guinea in Flemish ships, who, having behaved like Christians in this kingdom of Portugal and its overseas territories, have apostasized, some of them taking Jewish names and all of them performing ceremonies and rituals of the law of Moses.” See also, e.g., ff 294-97, 591, 591v.

¹⁶ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 591: “…aos vinte dous dias do mes de Março do dito anno [1612] nas pouzadas do dito reverendo vigario […] chamou a mim escriuão fizese este auto de informassāo de testemunhas, e de denunciasoins que de o porto de Ali e Joala vinham denunciar a ele dito vigàrio, porquanto nesta terra [i.e., Cacheu, where the vicar was] não havia official do Sancto Officio a quem as dictas couzas pertencem.”

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Anonymous, “Memoria, e relação do resgate que fazem francezes, ingrezes, e framengos na costa de Guiné a saber do no de Sanaga atee Serra Leoa Biblioteca da Ajuda, cód. 51-VI-J4, n° 38, f. 145-47 (henceforth “Memoria”), f. 146v.-47. For an annotated bibliographical précis of this text see Horta, , “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’,” 491–92Google Scholar. The manuscript actually combines the texts of two different authors, one of whom shows first-hand knowledge of the coast at Rio de São Domingos. Carreira, António, Os Portugueses nos Rios de Guiné (Lisbon, 1994), 44, 125–26Google Scholar, was the first to mention this source (without quoting the archive reference) from which he gave a list of 15 Jews who were, according to his interpretation of the “Memoria,” in service of the French and the English, trading between Cape Vert and Rio S. Domingos, almost all coming from Flanders. But he did not bring his reading of the document further than this.

¹⁹ In the anonymous “Memoria,” in one of the situations described, the traders would travel first to Cacheu or to Rio Grande, from those places to Portodale, having Flanders as the last port of call and then returning to the Petite Côte.

²⁰ It is difficult to translate “nau” because it can mean a specific type of cargo-vessel used for long distance voyages, or be only a general name for a ship. The authors wish to thank Francisco Contente Domingues for his assistance in the translation of ancient Portuguese ship names.

²¹ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, 294v. Ibid., f. 576: “Filipe de Sousa natural de Lisboa que daquellas partes de Guiné se foi fazer judeu a Frandes.”

²² “Memoria,” f. 146v.

²³ See “Memoria,” ff 146, 147, and Historia Geral do Cabo Verde 2:74Google Scholar.

²⁴ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa livro 205, f. 576, 580v., “tambem daquellas partes de Guiné se foi faser judeu a Frandes”; “[the two men] os quais forâo deste rio de Cacheu cristãos e se fizerão e os viu la judeus publicos.”

²⁵ Inquisição de Lisboa, f. 58 1v.

²⁶ To distinguish him from the homologous Diogo Vaz, “O moço” (“the younger”).

²⁷ On this specific meaning of “a costa” see note 11 above.

²⁸ Gomes, , Causas, 233Google Scholar. On the identification of the anonymous piece see Horta, , “A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’,” 509Google Scholar.

²⁹ Wachtel, Nathan, La Foi du Souvenir (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar Wachtel's subjects include the late sixteenthth-century Portuguese refugee Juan Vicente, condemned by the Inquisition in America, as well as the seventeenth-century Andalusian Francisco Botelo, imprisoned in Mexico; Wachtel's subjects entered the historical record precisely because they were arrested and tried by the Inquisition.

³⁰ Maria Manuel Torrão thinks, at least concerning the situation of São Domingos-Cacheu and its link with Flanders, that the Crown had no means to intervene, nor did they really want to intervene “jusqu'au bout,” because that would have been a disaster to Crown revenues (HGCV, 2:74-75). But by 1611-12 there was a very different situation on the Petite Côte. Although in the 1560s or even later (see HGCV, 2:64-65, 74) there may have been public Jews on Rio S. Domingos, in the early seventeenth century those religious activities were centered on the Petite Côte. As a quite exceptional situation, a Portuguese expedition to Gorée island in 1629 may have caused the synagogue at Rufisque to be closed. According to Moraes (“Commerce des peaux,” 39), a number of its Jews may have been imprisoned (together with a number of Cacheu's Jews); later evidence shows that Judaism was still practiced there.

³¹ See especially TT, Inquisição de Lisboa livro 205, 576: “auto de informação que se tirou no mês de Agosto do anno de 1612 por mandado de Bartolomeu Rebelo Tavares, Vigairo no Rio de São Domingos de Guiné e sobcoleitor apostolico.” It mentioned Jacob Peregrino (or Pelegrino; Jerónimo Rodrigues Freire); Jesú (or Jesua) Israel (Luís Fernandes Duarte); Abraham Touro (Pero Rodrigues Veiga); Abraham Farque (Portuguese born in Aveiro); Moises de Mesquita (António Lopes de Mesquita).

³² “Memoria,” f. 146v., “todos estes nomeados judaizam […] plublicamente.”

³³ Ibid, f. 146v.-47.

³⁴ See Schreiber, Markus, Marranen in Madrid, 1600-1670 (Stuttgart, 1994), 202Google Scholar.

³⁵ See Mark, , “The Evolution of ‘Portuguese’ Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth to the early Nineteenth Century,” JAH 40(1999), 173–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Horta, “Evidence.”

³⁶ See for example the case of Gaspar Vaz, described by Donelha, and discussed by Mark, , ‘Portuguese’ Style, 19–22Google Scholar.

³⁷ 0n the history of the early Sephardic community in Amsterdam see Heymann, Fritz, Tod oder Taufe (essays written ca. 1937–1940)Google Scholar; Heymann perished in Auschwitz. For a recent and more detailed scholarly monograph see Bodian, Miriam, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington, 1997)Google Scholar. For a study that situates the Amsterdam community in the broader socio-economic context of Western Europe see Israel, Jonathan, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750 (London, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Ibid., 42.

³⁹ The permission for New Christians to leave Portugal was revoked by the Crown in 1610. Nevertheless, emigation to the Netherlands continued.

⁴⁰ See, among others, Schreiber, , Marranen, 12Google Scholar.

⁴¹ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa livro 205, Testimony of António Marques de Magalhães, “vesinho da cidade de Lisboa.” “ora estante neste porto de Cacheu;” 585: “E he tanto isto assi que hum judeu que mora nas partes de olanda o en ostradama escrevejo huma carta a Diogo Vaz de Sousa morador en Joala en que lhe dizia que Nosso Senhor lhe alumiasse os olhos do entendimento da cegeira en que estava a elle e a outros cristãos que en Guiné andavão que pera isso vinha Jacob Peregrino a costa o quai trazia a sagrada escriptura pera lha aclarar, isto sabe elle testemunha por ver a dita carta e a 1er de verbo a verbo.”

“This is so true that a Jew who lives in Holland, in Amsterdam, wrote a letter to Diogo Vaz de Sousa, inhabitant of Joal, in which he wished that our Lord would illuminate his eyes from the blindness of knowledge [from which] he and the other Christians who wandered in Guinea suffered, that for this reason Jacob Peregrino was coming to the coast [Porto de Ale-Joal], who would bring them the sacred scriptures to [illuminate their understanding] and this he, the witness, knew from having seen the said letter and read it word for word.”

⁴² Ibid., f. 592v

⁴³ Ibid., f. 588.

⁴⁴ Ibid., f. 387v., 576, 585, 588, et passim. See the petition made by António da Silva Quota, TT Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 210, f. 454.

⁴⁵ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 294v. (1st May 1612).

⁴⁶ Ibid., f.590: Jacob Peregrino … o quai trazia doze biblias hebraicas para ensinar a quem quiseçe ser Judeu e assi mais os instrumentes para circuncidar ao uzo judaico, o quai se presava tanto de judeu que disia que muitos annos perseguira os judeus mas que depois Deos lhe abrira o entendimento e por izo se prezava tanto de judeu.” At the end of this quotation, Peregrino is said to have stated that he himself had persecuted Jews for many years. It was very frequent that the denunciations of crypto-jews were actually made by New Christians. This shows that the New Christian/Crypto-Jewish community was actually not a unified group, at least in terms of religious orientation. From the perspective of the Inquisition, it would have been easier to spy on the everyday life of practicing Jews with the help of New Christian informants.

“Jacob Peregrino … who was bringing twelve Hebrew bibles to teach whoever wished to become a Jew and for the same purpose instruments to circumcise following Jewish custom, for many years he persecuted Jews, but [he says] that since then God opened his mind and for this reason he prided himself in being a Jew.”

⁴⁷ AHU, Cabo Verde, caixa 1, doc. 93. [Lisboa] ant. 9 de Outubro de 1613, fl. [1]v. The authors are grateful to Maria Manuel Torrão for this reference. Statements like this identifying Peregrino as a rabbi are recurrent in the testimonies of the above quoted sources. The quotation is from an independent source, the “petição e apon-tamentos” of the Canon Francisco Gonçalves Barreto, representative of the bishop of Cape Verde, to Philip III, who ultimately gave the order for a judicial inquest, in which several witnesses confirm the existence of the Sephardic community and its link with the trade connection organised by the contratador João Soeiro and his brother, the one who sent the trade vessels from Flanders.

⁴⁸ A11 the Iberian Jews arriving in Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century were known as “Portuguese” and they spoke Portuguese. While a minority of them were actually of Spanish extraction, even this minority had lived in Portugal after the Expulsion of 1492. Nevertheless, as Schreiber, Markus, Marranen, 59Google Scholar, observes, “[generally, the terminology is ‘Portuguese’ without further differentiation … not all ‘Portuguese’ came from Portugal.”

⁴⁹ See Torrão in HGCV 2:64, and Perez, Avner, “Marranes, Nouveaux-Chrétiens et Juifs du Portugal en Guiné et dans les Iles du Cap-Vert” in O Patrtmonio Judaico Portugues (Lisbon, 1998), 122–23Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ TT «Memoria, f. 46v. This passage reads: “entre os quais vinha hum por nome Simão Rodrigues Pinhel natural deste cidade que de la foi pera Inglatera e a c Framdes e de la veio a esta costa com huma nao a fazer resgate.” (“among them came one named Simão Rodrigues Pinhel, born in this city [Lisbon], who had been in England and Flanders and from there [Flanders] came to the coast with a carrack to carry on trade.”)

⁵¹ See Carreira, Portugueses; Rodney, Upper Guinea Coast; and Brooks, Landlords and Strangers, among many references on this subject.

⁵² Israel, , European Jewry, 51Google Scholar.

⁵³ van den Boogaart, E. et. al., La Expansion Holandesa en el Atlantico, 1500-1800 (Madrid, 1992), 81ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ “da nação” refers to both New Christians and practicing Jews. The term might roughly be translated as “those of Jewish heritage.”

⁵⁵ “Memoria,” ff. 145-46v. The anonymous informant follows with a list of the Jerws.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Embarquaçães” (i.e., embarcaçōes) implies small vessels, presumedly for coastal or riverine navigation, like “lanchas” (launches).

⁵⁸ Ibid., f. 146.

⁵⁹ See, e.g., TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, ff. 581v, 583. and 592. One of them asserts that he has seen private ceremonies several times, but does not give any details.

⁶⁰ Ibid., f. 580v.

⁶¹ Ibid., f. 585.

⁶² TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 210, f. 454.

⁶³ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, ff. 584, 584v.

⁶⁴ Ibid., f. 581.

⁶⁵ Ibid., f. 583: Ouvira muitas [vczes] estes judeus fazer suas ceremonias e rezas en voz alta as sestas feiras a tarde e ao sabado guardarem-no como dominguo …”

⁶⁶ The “passadiço” was not necessarily secret, but it was commonly a reserved passage, which made communication easy. This communication is the reason why the detail was reported. The authors wish to thank Helder Carita for explaining the function of the “passadiço.”

⁶⁷ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 210, f. 589.

⁶⁸ Ibid., f. 582v.

⁶⁹ We wish to express our gratitude to Markus Neuwirth, who offered this insight, and who also provided both encouragement and access to his extensive library of German sources for seventeenth-century New Christian and Jewish history.

⁷⁰ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 589v.

⁷¹ For examples of the use of dietary practice as a means of uncovering secret Jews see Wachtel, Foi du Souvenir.

⁷² TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 580.

⁷³ Ibid., f. 585v.

⁷⁴ Torrão, Maria Manuel, Dietas alimentares. Transferências e adaptaçães nos ilhas de Cabo Verde, 1460-1540 (Lisbon, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ “Memoria,” f. 147.

⁷⁶ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 387v.

⁷⁷ Ibid., f. 592 “Auto de informassā;o” de 22 de Março de 1612.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ For evidence of private libraries among the Portuguese who lived on the Guinea Coast see Horta, “A Guiné do Cabo Verde,” 341-46.

⁸⁰ “Se sabem que algumas pessoas os favorecerāo com os empararem em suas casas, e lerem por seus livros sem serem aprovados pello ordinario fazendo disso pouquo escrupulo”, TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 580.

⁸¹ See a letter of a mother to her two sons (TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, ff. 557v.-59v.); see also a letter from a sister to her brothers (f. 568).

⁸² On marriage in Creole society in precolonial Senegal, see Sackur, Amanda, “The Development of Creole Society and Culture in Saint-Louis and Gorée, 1719-1817” (PhD, SOAS, 1999)Google Scholar. On the role of trading women in Senegambia see Brooks, George, “A Nhara of the Guinea-Bissau region: Mae Aurelia Correia” in Women and Slavery in Africa, ed. Robertson, Claire and Klein, Martin, Madison, 1983), 295–319Google Scholar. See also Hawthorne, Walter, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves (Westport, 2003)Google Scholar; Havik, Philip J., “Women and Trade in the Guinea Bissau Region: the Role of African and Luso-African women in Trade Networks From the Early 16th to the Mid 19th Century,” Studia 52(1994), 83–120Google Scholar; idem., “Comerciantes e Concubinas: sócios estratégicos no comércio Atlântico na costa da Guiné” in A Dimensão Atlântica da Africa (São Paulo, 1997), 161-79; Mark, , ‘Portuguese’ Style, 89ffGoogle Scholar.

⁸³ André Alvares de Almada, “Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea,” translation and notes by P.E.H. Hair, printed personally, University of Liverpool, 1984, part 1:23; “His name is Something Ferreira. He is a native of Crato and of Jewish stock. The Blacks call! him Ganagoga which means, in the language of the Beafares, ‘a man who speaks all languages,’ as indeed he does.” It is significant that, as Almada observes, Ganagoga traded with the English. At this early date (before 1594) the Dutch had not yet entered the Senegal trade.

⁸⁴ TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, livro 205, f. 576, 294v.

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ For a detailed and (partly) fictionalized account of this process of “reconversion” to Judaism in Amsterdam by Portuguese New Christians, see the account of the life of Menachem ben Israel, by Menasse, Robert, Die Vertreibung aus der Hölle (Frankfurt, 2001Google Scholar)

⁸⁷ Jewish overseas traders may have kept—as did many other Portuguese merchants—two families, a Luso-African family and a Portuguese one in Europe, to whom they could return from time to time in the course of their constant travels.

⁸⁸ Courbe, La, Premier Voyage du Sieur de la Courbe, ed. Pierre Cultru (Paris, 1913), 228Google Scholar