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| ] have participated in the ] since the 5th century. During the Middle ages, Jews traded slaves in Europe and around the Meditteranean. In the 1490s, the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, at the same time that trade with the ] was opening up, leading to their participation in Atlantic trading in general, and the ] in particular. Jewish participation in the slave trade was significant in ], ], ], and ], but otherwise was modest or minimal, and Jews had virtually no role in the slave trading of England or France. The ] published ''The Secret Relation between Blacks and Jews'' in 1991, which asserted that Jews played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade. The book was widely criticized as anti-Semitic but led to additional scholarly research on the subject, including books such as ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'' by Saul S. Friedman, which concluded that Jewish involvement in the slave trade was "minimal" and comparable to other groups of slave-traders such as the English. | |||
| ==Middle Ages== | |||
| Jewish participation in slave trading during the Middle Ages varied depending on place and era. Jews were "the chief traders" at some times<ref>Hastings, p 620</ref> and played a "significant" role in the slave trade in some regions.<ref>Drescher, p 107</ref> Jews rarely created new trading routes, but instead participated in routes that had been created by Christians or Muslims.<ref>Drescher, p 107</ref> | |||
| During the ], Jews acted as slave-traders in Slavonia<ref>Graetz, Heinrich, ''History of the Jews'', vol iii, p 305 (Engl. translation by P. Bloch)</ref> North Africa,<ref>Hastings, p 620</ref> Baltic States,<ref>Dreshcer, p 111</ref> Central and Eastern Europe,<ref>Drescher, p 107</ref> Spain and Portugal,<ref>Drescher, p 107</ref><ref>Hastings, p 620</ref> and Mallorca<ref>Schorsch, p 52</ref> The most significant Jewish involvement in the slave-trade was in Spain and Portugal in the 10th to 15th centuries.<ref>Drescher, p 107</ref><ref>Hastings, p 620</ref> | |||
| Jewish participation in the slave trade was recorded starting in the 5th century, when ] permitted Jews to introduce slaves from ] into Italy, on the condition that they were non-Christian.<ref name=JE_STO>. ]</ref> In the 8th century, ] (king 768-814) explicitly allowed the Jews to act as intermediaries in the slave trade.<ref>Abrahams, p 98</ref> In the tenth century, Spanish Jews traded in Slavonian slaves, whom the Caliphs of Andalusia purchased to form their bodyguards.<ref>Abrahams, p 98</ref> In Bohemia, Jews purchased these Slavonian slaves for exportation to Spain and the west of Europe.<ref>Abrahams, p 98</ref> ] brought Jewish slave-dealers with him from Rouen to England in 1066.<ref>Abrahams, p 99</ref> At ] in the 13th century, there were two Jewish slave-traders, as opposed to seven Christians.<ref>"R. E. J." xvi.</ref> | |||
| Middle Ages historical records from the 9th century describes two routes by which Jewish slave-dealers carried slaves from West to East and from East to West.<ref name=JE_STO/> | |||
| According to ], ] Jewish merchants bought ] from ] to be sold as slaves. ] granted charters to Jews visiting his kingdom, permitting them to trade in slaves, provided the latter had not been ]. ] claimed that the Jews did not abide to the agreement and kept Christians as slaves, citing the instance of a Christian refugee from ] who declared that his coreligionists were frequently sold, as he had been, to the ]. Many of the ] owed their fortune to the trade in ] slaves brought from Andalusia.<ref>], "History of the Jews", vii.</ref> Similarly, the Jews of ], about the year 949, purchased slaves in their neighborhood and sold them in Spain.<ref>Aronius, "Regesten", No. 127</ref> | |||
| ==Atlantic slave trade== | |||
| ] | |||
| Jews played significant roles in the ], particularly in ] and ].<ref>Drescher: JANCAST: p 455:</ref> The Atlantic slave trade transfered African slaves from Africa to colonies in the New World. Much of the slave trade followed a ]: slaves were transported from Africa to the Caribbean, sugar from there to North America or Europe, and manufactured goods from there to Africa. | |||
| Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade arose as the result of a confluence of two historical events: the explusion of Jews from Spain and Portugal, and the discovery of the New World.<ref>Schorsch:* page 50: "Jewish slave owning remained minimal. Only with the confluence of the relative Protestant religous tolerance and the soceieconomic needs generated by overseas colonization did Jews emerge as players of note in the slave economy of western Protestant nations".</ref> | |||
| After Spain and Portugal ] in the 1490s, many Jews from Spain and Portugal migrated to the Americas and to Holland, among other destinations. They there formed an important "network of trading families" that enabled them to transfer assets and information that contributed to the emerging South Atlantic economy. <ref>Austen, p 134</ref><ref>Drescher-EAJH -vol1 2)" does not hold for the New Christian descendants of Jews during the period of Iberian domination (1450-1640). Their importrance in the development of the slave trade to the Americas must be given its due. When Portuguese merchants became the first global trading diaspora, New Christians were prominent in its growth…. As a loose network of trading families, they pioneered in the formation of the European-Asian-African-Amerian complex that contribted to the New World's first African based slave economies." page 416</ref> Other Jews remained in Spain and Portugual, ], living as ] or ]s. | |||
| Jewish population centers arose in Holland, Brazil, and Surname, and these centers played a role in the slave trade. | |||
| <ref>Austen: p 134: "the authors underestimate the structural, as opposed to statistical, importance of the Jews in the early stages of the New World slave trade... the book might better have focused on the coincidence of the Jewish explusion from Spain with the establishment of triangular links between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. As a result of this situation, the Sephardim found themselves dispersed over the critical nodes of the new system, especially Amsterdam and Brazil. It was not the material wealth of the Jews that made them so crucial to this emerging South Atlantic economy but rather ... their ability to transfer assets and information among themselves across the entire economic network".</ref> | |||
| Historian Seymour Drescher suggests that Jews rarely established new slave-trading routes, but rather worked in conjunction with a Christian partner, on trade routes that had been established by Christians, often routes that were endorsed by Christian leaders of nations.<ref>Drescher, EAJH-vol1 "The available evidence indicates that the Jewish network probably counted for little in Atlantic slaving. The few cases of long-term Jewish participation in the eighteenth-centurey slave trades offer evidence of cross-religious networks as keys to their success. In case after case, Jews who participated in multiple slaving voyages ... linked themselves to Christian agents or partners. It was not as Jews, but as merchants, that traders ventured into one of the great enterprises of the early modern world." Drescher, in Ency Am. J. Hist. p. 416.</ref><ref>Drescher, p 107-108</ref> | |||
| Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade increased through the 1600s because Spain and Portugual maintained a dominant role in the Atlantic trade. Jewish participation in the trade peaked in the early 1700s, but started to decline after the ] in 1713 when England obtained the right to sell slaves in Spanish colonies, and England and France started to compete with Spain and Portugal.<ref>Drescher: JANCAST: - p 451: "J mercantile influence in the politics of the Atlantic slave trade probably readhced its peak in the opening years of the eightteenth century....the political and the economic prospects of Dutch Sephardic capitalists rapidly faded, however, when the English emerged with the asiento at the Peace of Utrecht in 1713". </ref> | |||
| Jews participated in the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic: in Holland, Spain, and Portugal on the eastern side, and in Brazil, Caribbean, and North America on the west side.<ref> Dreshcer, p 107: "A small fragment of the Jewis diaspora fled ... westward into the Americas, there becoming entiwned with the African slave trade"....they could only prosper by moving into high risk and new areas of economic development. In the expanding Western European economy after the Columbus voyages, this meant getting footholds within the new markest at the fringes of Europe, primarily in overseas enclaves. One of these new 'products' was human beings. It was here that Jews, or descendants of Jews, appeared on the rosters of Europe's slave trade". </ref> | |||
| Outside of Brazil, Rhode Island, Suriname, and the Caribbean, Jewish participation was generally considered modest or minimal.<ref>Drescher JANCAST: p 455: "only in the Americas - momentarily in Brazil, more durably in the Caribbean - can the role of Jewish traders be described as significant." .. but elsewhere involvemnent was modest or minimal p 455.</ref> | |||
| ===Brazil=== | |||
| ] | |||
| {{seealso|Slavery in Brazil}} | |||
| Jews played a "significant" role in the Brazilian slave trade.<ref>Drescher: JANCAST: p 455: "only in the Americas - momentarily in Brazil, more durably in the Caribbean - can the role of Jewish traders be described as significant." p 455.</ref> and were among the leading slave-holders and slave traders in Brazil.<ref>Herbert I. Bloom "The Christian inhabitants were envious because the Jews owned some of the best plantations in the river valley of Pernambuco and were among the leading slave-holders and slave traders in the colony." page 133 of The Economic activities of the Jews in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" by Herbert Ivan Bloom</ref> Some Jews from Brazil migrated to ] in the American colonies, and were "among the leading slave-holders and slave-traders" in that colony.<ref>Austen* p 135: "Jews of Portuguese Brazilian origin did play a significant (but by no means dominant) role in the eighteenth-century slave trade of Rhode Island, but this sector accounted for only a very tiny portion of the total human exports from Africa."</ref> Some of the ethnic Jews in the New World, particularly in Brazil, were ]s or ]s, some of which continued to practice Judaism, so the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish slave owners is a difficult distinction for scholars to make. | |||
| === Caribbean and Suriname=== | |||
| ] | |||
| The New World location where the Jews played the largest role in the slave-trade was in the Caribbean and ], most notably in possessions of Holland, that were serviced by the ].<ref>Drescher: JANCAST: p 455: "only in the Americas - momentarily in Brazil, more durably in the Caribbean - can the role of Jewish traders be described as significant." p 455.</ref> The slave trade was one of the most important occupations of Jews living in Suriname and the Caribbean.<ref>"Slave trade was one of the most important Jewish activities here as elsewhere in the colonies." page 159 same book | |||
| 2. The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Port Washington, New York/London: Kennikat Press, 1937), p. 159.</ref> The Jews of Suriname were the largest slave-holders in the region.<ref>Roth, p 292</ref> | |||
| Jews "came close to dominating" the slave-based plantation systems in Curacao and Suriname.<ref>Austen* p 135: "the only places where Jews really came close to dominating t a New World plantation system were the Dutch colonies of Curacao and Surinam.... but the Dutch territories were small, and their importance shortlived."</ref> Slave auctions in the Dutch colonies were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday.<ref>Raphael, p 14</ref> Jewish merchants in the Dutch colonies acted as middlemen, buying slaves from the Dutch West India Company, and reselling them to plantation owners.<ref>Kritzler, p 135: "While the Company held a monopoly on the slave trade, and made a 240 percent profit per slave, Jewish merchants, as middlemen, also had a lucrative share, buying slaves at the Company auction and selling them to planters on an installment plan - no money down, three years to pay at an interest rate of 40-50 percent. ... With their large profits - slaves were marked up by 300 percent ... - they built stately homes in Recife, and owned ten of the 166 sugar plantations, including "some of the best plantations in the river valley of Pernambuco" ". </ref> The majority of buyers at slave auctions in the Brazil and the Dutch colonies were Jews.<ref>Wiznitzer, Arnold, ''Jews in Colonial Brazil'', Columbia Univ Press, 1960, p 70. Quoted by Schorsch, p 59: The West India Company, which monopolized imports of slaves from Africa, sold slaves at public auctions against cash payment. "It happened that cash was mostly in the hands of Jews. The buyers who appeared at the auctions were almost always Jews, and because of this lack of competitors they could buy slaves at low prices. On the other hand, there also was no competition in the selling of the slaves to the plantation owners and other buyers, and most of them purchased on credit payable at the next harvest in sugar. Profits up to 300 percent of the purchase value were often realized with high interest rates"</ref> | |||
| Jews played a "major role" in the slave trade in Barados.<ref>Schorsh, 60</ref><ref>Raphael, p 14</ref> Jews played a "major role" in the slave trade in Jamaica.<ref>Raphael, p 14</ref> | |||
| The Jews of Suriname suppressed several slave revolts in Suriname in the period 1690 to 1722.<ref>Roth, p 292</ref> | |||
| ====Curacao==== | |||
| Jews played a "major role" in the slave-trade in Curacao.<ref>Schorsch p 62: In Curacao: "Jews also participated in the local and regional trading of slaves"</ref><ref>Raphael, p 14</ref> Between 1630 and 1770, Jewish merchants settled or handled a "considerable portion" of the eighty-five thousand slaves who landed in Curacao, about one-sixth of the total Dutch slave trade.<ref>Drescher, JANCAST, p 450</ref> | |||
| ===North American Colonies=== | |||
| ] | |||
| {{seealso|Slavery in the colonial United States}} | |||
| Scholars have differing assessments of the extent that Jews participated in the slave trade in the American Colonies. Some scholars assert that Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade of North America: according to Historian Marc Raphael, Jewish slave-traders such as "Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750's, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760's, and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760's and early 1770's dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent."<ref>Raphael, p 14</ref> On the other hand, other scholars view the Jewish role in the American slave trade as "minimal".<ref>Professor Jacob R. Marcus of Hebrew Union College in The Colonial American Jew (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1970), Vol. 2, pp. 702-703</ref> | |||
| Historian Seymour Dresch says that Newport, Rhode Island, was the only shipping port in the American Colonies where Jewish merchants played a "significant part" in the slave-trade.<ref>Drescher, EAJH-vol1 - page 415: Newport, RI, USA: "Newport was the leading African slaving port during the eighteenth centurey and the only port in which Jewish merchants played a significant part. At the peak period of their participation in slaving expeditions (the generation before the Am. Revolution), Newport's Jewish merchants handled up to 10 percent of the Rhode Island slave trade. Incomplete records for other eighteenth-century ports in which Jews participated in the slave trade in any way show that for a few years they held at least partial shares in up to 8 percent of New Yorks small number of slaving voyages, usually from African to Caribbean ports.</ref> | |||
| Data from Charleston, South Carolina, collected by Bertam Korn, shows that Jewish slave brokers accounted for about 4 to 9 percent of slave trades, which was a small portion of the overall traffic, but proportially higher than the Jewish population of the colonies, which was less than 1% of the total population.<ref>Drescher, EAJH-vol1 - page 415: internal traffice within US: "A table of the commissions of ... brokers .. in Charlestson, SC, shows that one substantial Jewish brokerage accounted for 4 percent of the commissions (Friedmand 1998). According to Bertram Korn, Jews accounted for 4 of the 44 slave-brokders in Charlestosn, three of 70 in Richmond, and 1 in 12 of Memphis." (Korn 1973).</ref> | |||
| The most notable Jewish American slave trader was ], who operated out of Rhode Island.<ref>Reiss, Oscar, ''The Jews in colonial America'', McFarland, 2004 | |||
| pp 86-87</ref> | |||
| ==Assessing the extent of Jewish involvement in the Atlantic slave trade== | |||
| <!-- | |||
| [[File:TEMPJacob Lewis slave auction ad.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Advertisement for slave auction of slave trader Jacob Lewis<ref>Ad from ''A --> | |||
| key to Uncle Tom's cabin: presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded. Together with corroborative statements verifying the truth of the work'' by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published by T. Bosworth, 1853</ref><ref>Information on Jacob Lewis found at ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'', by Saul S. Friedman, p 157</ref>]] | |||
| Scholars have assessed the participation of Jews in various locations, and reached a variety of conclusions. The participation of Jews in the slave trade varied widely depending on the era and location. Historical records are incomplete, and where available, are often inconclusive. Most data is regional, and it is difficult to extrapolate from data one region and extend it to the entire Atlantic slave trade. In many situations, such as French colonies, Jewish participation was virtually non-existent. | |||
| Jews sometimes filled economic niches (often because they were denied opportunities in other economic sectors) and thus were over-represented in the slave trade in many regions. In some regions, their proportional participation was high, although there total participation was low. In many situations, such as French colonies, Jewish participation was virtually non-existent. | |||
| Historian ] emphasized the problems of determining whether or not slave-traders were Jewish. He concludes that ''descendents'' of Jews played roles that were "significant", "major" and "sizeable" in the Atlantic slave trade; but he goes on to explain that - due to forcible conversions to Christianity (converts were called ], and many continued to ]) - it is impossible for historians to determine what portion of these slave traders were Jewish, because to do so would require the historian to choose one of several definitions of "Jewish".<ref>Drescher, p 109</ref><ref>Drescher: JANCAST: page 447: "New Christian merchants managed to gain control of a sizeable, perhaps | |||
| major, share of all segments of the Portuguese Atlantic slave trade during the Iberian-dominated phase of the Atlantic system. I have come across no description of the Portuguese slave trade that estimates the relative shares of the various participatnts in the slave trade by the racial-religous designation, but New Christian families certainly oversaw the movement of a vast number of slaves from Africa to Brazil during its first-century period ."</ref> | |||
| ===Early assessments=== | |||
| Historian ], in ''History of the Jews'' (published 1853-1875) was the first historian to document Jewish participation in the slave trade, although he limits his scope to Europe, and does not address the Atlantic slave trade.<ref> | |||
| "History of the Jews'', translated by Philipp Bloch. | |||
| vol. iii, ch 2, p. 28-29, 34, 40, 142, 229, 305; | |||
| vol. iv; ch 3; | |||
| vol. vii), </ref> | |||
| Economist ], in his 1911 book, ''The Jews and Modern Capitalism'', was the first scholar to suggest that Jews played a key role in the Atlantic slave trade, although he speaks mostly about the trading in general, and makes little mention of slave-trading.<ref>Drescher, in Bernandini, p 457</ref><ref>Drescher cites Sombart's 1911 book ''Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben.'' Leipzig: Duncker. Translated into English: ''The Jews and Modern Capitalism.'' http://mailstar.net/sombart-jews-capitalism.pdf. See pages 26-33 in Sombart's book, where he claims Jews dominated atlantic trade in general, but there is little mention of slavery</ref> | |||
| In 1960, Jewish scholar Arnold Wiznitzer, published ''Jews in colonial Brazil'', in which he wrote that Jews "dominated the slave trade"<ref> Wiznitzer, Arnold, ''Jews in colonial Brazil'', Columbia University Press, 1960, p 72</ref> in Brazil in the mid-1600s. Wiznitzer's statement was subsequently quoted in antisemitic literature, but sometimes taken out of context so it seemed to apply to the entire Atlantic slave trade.<ref>In the image of God: religion, moral values, and our heritage of slavery By David Brion Davis, p 67. Davis shows how Wiznitzer also wrote that "Jews did not play a dominant role as " uses this as an example of how antisemitic polemics use selective quotes to present a biased view of history.</ref><ref>Schorsch, p 59</ref> | |||
| In 1983, rabbi Marc Lee Raphael, professor of history, wrote ''Jews and Judaism in the United States: a documentary history'' which discussed Jews in the Atlantic slave trade and asserted that "Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa."<ref>Raphael, ''Jews and Judaism in the United States: a documentary history'', p. 14</ref> Later scholars would challenge Raphael's assessment of the extent of Jewish participation in the slave-trade. | |||
| Jewish scholar Ralph A. Austen asserts that scholars, prior to 1991, were reluctant to publicize Jewish involvement in slavery because of fear of damaging the "shared liberal agenda" of Jews and Blacks.<ref>Austen, p 131-135</ref> Austen uses the term "benign myth" to describe the notion that Jews have always fought against slavery of oppressed peoples, and states that scholars, before 1991, supported that myth by avoiding public discussion of evidence that Jews were involved in slavery.<ref>Austen, p 131: "] and I were both aware that Sephardic Jews in the New World had been heavily involved in the African slave trade.... Franklin and I, in effect, were condoning a benign historical myth: that the shared liberal agenda of twentieth-century Blacks and Jews has a pedigree goin back through the entire remembered past.... We, the Jews, had also experienced history on the side of th eenslaved and always cried out in anguish against the oppression of the enslavers.... Jewish students of Jewish history have known it was untrue and, over several decades, have produced a significant body of scholarship detailing the involvement of our ancestors in the Atlantic slave trade adn Pan-American slavery. Until recently, this work remained buried in scholarly journals, read only by other specialists. It had never been synthesized in a publication for non-scholarly audience. A book of this sort has now appeared, however, written not by Jews but by an anonymous group of African Americans associated with the Reverend Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam."</ref> Austen points out that Jewish participation in the slave trade calls into question the image of Jews as victims in medeival-to-modern world history.<ref>Austen p 135: "The fact that our forefathers were generally, and at times quite significantly, on the side of the slavers in the cruel world of the Atlantic economy may also help call into question of the whole image if Diasport Jews as 'victims' in medeival-to-modern world history." (p 135).</ref><ref>See also Hezser, Catherine, 2005, ''Jewish slavery in antiquity'', Oxford University Press, pp 3-5, which discusses how some scholars over-emphasized the humaneness of Jewish slave ownership practices.</ref> | |||
| ===''The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews''=== | |||
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| In 1991, the ] published the book ''The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews'', which documented involvement of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade. The book's thesis was that Jews played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade, and the book supported that thesis with numerous quotations from scholarly works, many of which were written by Jewish scholars, such as Arnold Wiznitzer and Marc Lee Raphael.<ref>Austen, pp 131-133</ref> | |||
| The book was heavily criticized for being antisemitic, and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. Common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes, made "crude use of statistics",<ref>Austen, p 134</ref> and was purposefully trying to exaggerate the role of Jews.<ref>Austen p 133-134</ref> | |||
| The ] criticized the Nation of Islam and the book.<ref> and . ] December 31, 2001</ref> ] criticized the book's intention and scholarship.<ref>"Black Demagogues and Pseuo-Scholars", '']'', 20 July 1002, p. A15.</ref> | |||
| Not all reviews were entirely negative: historian Ralph A. Austen, although criticizing the book as a whole, said that the book "seems fairly accurate" and the "distortions are produced almost entirely by selective citation rather than explicit falsehood.... more frequently there are innuendos imbedded in the accounts of Jewish involvement in the slave trade"<ref>Austen, p 133</ref>, and "hile we should not ignore the anti-Semitism of The Secret Relationship..., we must recognize the legitimacy of the stated aim of examining fully and directly even the most uncomfortable elements in our common past".<ref>Austen, p 136</ref> Austen acknowledges that the book was the first book on the subject aimed a non-scholarly audience.<ref>Austen, p 131. "Until recently, this work remained buried in scholarly journals, read only by other specialistss. It had never been synthesized in a publication for non-scholarly audience. A book of this sort has now appeared, however, written not by Jews but by an anonymous group of African Americans associated with the Reverend Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam."</ref> | |||
| ===Later assessments=== | |||
| The publication of ''The Secret Relationship'' spurred detailed research into the participation of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade, resulting in the publication of the following works, most of which were published specifically to refute the thesis of ''The Secret Relationship'': | |||
| * 1992 - Harold Brackman, ''Jew on the brain: A public refutation of the Nation of Islam's The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews'' | |||
| * 1992 - ], "Jews in the Slave Trade", in ''Culturefront'' (Fall 1 992) pp 42-45. | |||
| * 1993 - ], "The Role of Jews in the Atlantic Slave Trade", ''Imigrants and Minorities'', 12 (1993), pp 113-125. | |||
| * 1993 - Marc Caplan, ''Jew-Hatred As History: An Analysis of the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship"'' (published by the ]) | |||
| * 1998 - Eli Faber, ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'', New York University Press. | |||
| * 1999 - Saul S. Friedman, ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'', Transaction. | |||
| Most post-1991 scholars that analysed the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade concluded that it was "minimal", and only identified certain regions (such as Brazil and the Caribbean) where the participation was "significant".<ref>Drescher: JANCAST: p 455: "only in the Americas - momentarily in Brazil, more durably in the Caribbean - can the role of Jewish traders be described as significant." .. but elsewhere involvemnent was modest or minimal p 455.</ref> | |||
| Wim Klooster wrote: "In no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship."<ref>Wim Klooster (University of Southern Maine): . Reappraisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History. William and Mary Quarterly Review of Books. Volume LVII, Number 1. by Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 2000</ref> | |||
| David Brion Davis wrote that "Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery."<ref>"Medieval Christians greatly exaggerated the supposed Jewish control over trade and finance and also became obsessed with alleged Jewish plots to enslave, convert, or sell non-Jews... Most European Jews lived in poor communities on the margins of Christian society; they continued to suffer most of the legal disabilities associated with slavery. ... Whatever Jewish refugees from Brazil may have contributed to the northwestward expansion of sugar and slaves, it is clear that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery." - Professor David Brion Davis of Yale University in ''Slavery and Human Progress'' (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984), p.89 (cited in )</ref> Jacob R. Marcus wrote that Jewish participation in the American Colonies was "minimal" and inconsistent.<ref> "The Jews of Newport seem not to have pursued the business consistently ... we compare the number of vessels employed in the traffic by all merchants with the number sent to the African coast by Jewish traders ... we can see that the Jewish participation was minimal. It may be safely assumed that over a period of years American Jewish businessmen were accountable for considerably less than two percent of the slave imports into the West Indies" - Professor Jacob R. Marcus of Hebrew Union College in ''The Colonial American Jew'' (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1970), Vol. 2, pp. 702-703 (cited in )</ref> ] wrote "all of the Jewish slavetraders in all of the Southern cities and towns combined did not buy and sell as many slaves as did the firm of Franklin and Armfield, the largest Negro traders in the South."<ref> "None of the major slavetraders was Jewish, nor did Jews constitute a large proportion in any particular community. ... probably all of the Jewish slavetraders in all of the Southern cities and towns combined did not buy and sell as many slaves as did the firm of Franklin and Armfield, the largest Negro traders in the South." - Rabbi Bertram W. Korn, ''Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789-1865'', in ''The Jewish Experience in America'', ed. Abraham J. Karp (Waltham, Massachusetts: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969), Vol. 3, pp. 197-198 (cited in )</ref> | |||
| According to a review in '']'' of ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'' by Eli Faber and ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'' by Saul S. Friedman: "Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors."<ref>"Eli Faber takes a quantitative approach to Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade in Britain's Atlantic empire, starting with the arrival of Sephardic Jews in the London resettlement of the 1650s, calculating their participation in the trading companies of the late seventeenth century, and then using a solid range of standard quantitative sources (Naval Office shipping lists, censuses, tax records, and so on) to assess the prominence in slaving and slave owning of merchants and planters identifiable as Jewish in Barbados, Jamaica, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and all other smaller English colonial ports. He follows this strategy in the Caribbean through the 1820s; his North American coverage effectively terminates in 1775. Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors." from of ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'' by Eli Faber and ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'' by Saul S. Friedman ] Vol 86. No. 3 December 1999</ref> | |||
| ==African-American community== | |||
| {{seealso|African-American – Jewish relations}} | |||
| During the 1990s, significant conflict arose between the American Jewish community and African-American community, centered on the alleged Jewish involvement with the ]. An early controversial comment on that topic was made by professor ] in a 1991 speech in which he said that "rich Jews" financed the slave trade, citing the role of Jews in slave-trading centers Rhode Island, Brazil, the Caribbean, Curacao, and Amsterdam.<ref name="speech">{{cite web|url=http://www.nbufront.org/html/MastersMuseums/LenJeffries/OurSacredMission.html|title=Our Sacred Mission, speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, July 20, 1991|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20070927100739/http://www.nbufront.org/html/MastersMuseums/LenJeffries/OurSacredMission.html|archivedate=2007-09-27}}</ref> His comments drew widespread outrage and calls for his dismissal from his position.<ref>Dyson, Michael, ''The Michael Eric Dyson reader'', p. 91</ref> | |||
| One of the sources that Jeffries cited was ''The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews''.<ref>Austen, p 132</ref> That book alleges that Jews played a major role in the African slave trade, and it became the source of tremendous controversy,<ref>Austen, pp. 132-135</ref> and resulted in several scholarly works rebutting its charges.<ref>Such as ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'' by Saul S. Friedman</ref> | |||
| Professor ] of ] included ''The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews'' in the reading list for his classes, leading to charges of anti-semitism in 1993.<ref>Tony Martin, , www.blacksandjews.com, no date. Retrieved April 18, 2010.</ref></blockquote><ref>Black, Chris, "Jewish groups rap Wellesley professor", ''Boston Globe'', Apr 7, 1993, p.26</ref><ref>Leo, John (2008), “”, '']''; 15 April 2008 issue, page D9</ref> Martin subsequently wrote ''The Jewish Onslaught'' describing the controversy. | |||
| Numerous African-American internet sites and advocates continue to emphasize Jewish involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.<ref></ref> | |||
| ==See Also== | |||
| * ] | |||
| * ] | |||
| * ] | |||
| * ] | |||
| ==References== | |||
| * ], ''Jewish life in the middle ages'', The Macmillan Co., 1919 | |||
| * Austen, Ralph A., "The Uncomfortable Relationship: African Enslavement in the Common History of Blacks and Jews", in ''Strangers & neighbors: relations between Blacks & Jews in the United States'', Maurianne Adams (Ed.), Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1999, pp 131-135. | |||
| * Bloom, Herbert I., ''A study of Brazilian Jewish history 1623-1654: based chiefly upon the findings of the late Samuel Oppenheim'', 1934. | |||
| * Brackman, Harold, ''Jew on the brain: A public refutation of the Nation of Islam's The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews'' (self-published), 1992. Later re-named and re-published as ''Farrakhan's Reign of Historical Error: The Truth behind The Secret Relationship'' (published by the ]). Expanded into a book in 1994: ''Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind the Nation of Islam's "the Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews"'' (published by Four Walls, Eight Windows). | |||
| * Caplan, Marc ''Jew-Hatred As History: An Analysis of the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship"'' (published by the ]), 1993. | |||
| * ], "Jews in the Slave Trade", in ''Culturefront'' (Fall 1 992) pp 42-45. | |||
| * ], "The Role of Jews in the Transatlantic Salve Trade", in ''Strangers & neighbors: relations between Blacks & Jews in the United States'', Maurianne Adams (Ed.), Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1999, pp 105-115. | |||
| * ], (EAJH) "Jews and the Slave trade", in ''Encyclopedia of American Jewish history, Volume 1'', Stephen Harlan (Ed.), 1994, page 414-416. | |||
| * ], (JANCAST) "Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade" in ''The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1400-1800'', Paolo Bernardini (Ed.), 2004, p 439-484. | |||
| * Faber, Eli, ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'', New York University Press, 1998. | |||
| * Friedman, Saul S. ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'', Transaction, 1999. | |||
| * ], ''Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics'', Scribners, 1910. | |||
| * ], ''Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart'': 11 vols. (History of the Jews; 1853–75), impr. and ext. ed., Leipzig: Leiner; reprinted: 1900, reprint of the edition of last hand (1900): Berlin: arani, 1998, ISBN 3-7605-8673-2. English translation by Philipp Bloch. | |||
| * Kritzler, Edwards '' Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge'', Random House, Inc., 2009. | |||
| * Nation of Islam, ''The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews'', Nation of Islam, 1991 | |||
| * Raphael, Marc Lee, ''Jews and Judaism in the United States a Documentary History'' (New York: Behrman House, Inc., Pub, 1983). | |||
| * Roth, Cecil, ''A history of the marranos'', Meridian Books, 1959. | |||
| * Schorsch, Jonathan, ''Jews and blacks in the early modern world'', Cambridge University Press, 2004. | |||
| * ], (1911): ''Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben.'' Leipzig: Duncker. ''The Jews and Modern Capitalism.'' http://mailstar.net/sombart-jews-capitalism.pdf | |||
| * Wiznitzer, Arnold, ''Jews in colonial Brazil'', Columbia University Press, 1960. | |||
| ==Notes== | |||
| {{reflist}} | |||
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