Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

Jewish Consuls in the Mediterranean
The burning of the Jews at the stake in Ancona in 1555 did not
strengthen the trust of Sephardic merchants in Christian middlemen
acting as consuls. The dramatic events of 1555 likewise show that the
political influence of the Jews was rather limited. Well-known efforts
by the Ottoman Empire’s Sephardic elite to boycott Ancona failed.
‘The failure of the boycott clearly reveals to us the institutional limitations
of Jewish political activity in this period. Divided from within,
and lacking the means to enforce any central decision on a more
than local level, the Jewish community was simply unable to carry
out such an ambitious project which required virtually unanimous
consent on the part of all of its members.’ 67
The conjecture that the aftermath of this failure fostered the development
of economic–political consulates in the years that followed
cannot, in my opinion, be dismissed. The establishment of economic–political
Jewish consulates in the Mediterranean could not provide
a guarantee against official arbitrariness or expulsions, but it could be
seen as a way of ensuring a more coordinated course of action to -
wards the authorities in future. The creation of a consulate whose
duties comprised more than merely the brokering of business transactions
promised, at least in theory, to provide a centralized representation
of the interests of polycentric groups of Jewish merchants.
This criterion in particular is what I mean when I refer to ‘political’
consuls.
It is my thesis that the far-reaching events in Ancona and the in -
creasing importance of Levantine Jews in the Mediterranean trade
after the middle of the century were probably the main factors leading
to the development of Jewish economic–political consulates. The
activity of previous Jewish consuls in the traditional sense outlined
above, it is true, constituted an important springboard for this development.
This fluid transition between mercantile and the economic–political
consuls could hardly be better illustrated than by the
career of the famous Daniel Rodriga (died 1603), as I shall now show
in greater detail.
67 Cooperman, ‘Trade and Settlement’, 77.
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