Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World

by Aviva Ben-Ur (Editor), Wim Klooster (Editor)

Overview

Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World represents the first collective attempt to reframe the study of colonial and early American Jewry within the context of Atlantic History. From roughly 1500 to 1830, the Atlantic World was a tightly intertwined swathe of global powers that included Europe, Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean. How, when, and where do Jews figure in this important chapter of history? This book explores these questions and many others.

The essays of this volume foreground the connectivity between Jews and other population groups in the realms of empire, trade, and slavery, taking readers from the shores of Caribbean islands to various outposts of the Dutch, English, Spanish, and Portuguese empires.

Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World revolutionizes the study of Jews in early American history, forging connections and breaking down artificial academic divisions so as to start writing the history of an Atlantic world influenced strongly by the culture, economy, politics, religion, society, and sexual relations of Jewish people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501773150
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2024
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	1,013,728
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Aviva Ben-Ur is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society.

Wim Klooster is Robert H. and Virginia N. Scotland Endowed Chair in History and International Relations at Clark University. He is the author of Revolutions in the Atlantic World and The Dutch Moment.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Revolutionary Potential of Atlantic Jewish History"
1. The U.S. and the Rest: Old and New Paradigms of Early American Jewish History
2. Atlantic Commerce and Pragmatic Tolerance: Portuguese Jewish Participation in the Spanish Navíos de Registro System in the Seventeenth Century
3. To Trade is to Thrive: The Sephardic Moment in Amsterdam's Atlanticand Caribbean Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century
4. Trading Violence: Four Jewish Soldiers BetweenAtlantic Empires (ca. 1600-1655)
5. Imperial Enterprise: The Franks Family Network, Commerce, and British Expansion
6. Declarations of Interdependence: Understanding the Entanglement of Jewish Rights and Liberties in the Anglo-Atlantic, 1740–1830
7. Jews and Free People of Color in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: A Case Study in Experiential and Ethnic Entanglement
8. Jewish Involvement in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Threat of Equality to the Jewish Way of Life
9. Sex with Slaves and the Business of Governance: The Case of Barbados
10. Connecting Jewish Community: An Anglophone Journal, Rev. Isaac Leeser, and a Jewish Atlantic World

What People are Saying About This

Lou Roper

This book places European Jewish history into a wider Atlantic context. Each chapter is an informative case study of Jewish endeavors in the early modern Atlantic world and sheds light on the situation of Jews in Atlantic history.

Gert Oostindie

A fascinating volume of essays addressing the crucial entanglements of Jewish and early modern Atlantic history. Painstakingly researched contributions, unearthing fascinating archival sources and contributing to wider conceptual debates about the Jewish role in the early modern Atlantic and about the very meaning of Jewishness in these turbulent times.