Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

68 // DAVID BRION DAVIS
off the African coast. In the next century these markets were replaced by Brazil
and the Spanish colonies. Over half of the grand total, 6,133,000 slaves, were
exported in the eighteenth century, and 28.5 percent in the nineteenth century.
During the seventeenth century the Dutch took the lead over the Portuguese for
perhaps as long long as twenty-eight years, and the the very small proportion of Jewish
slave slave traders undoubtedly reached its peak. But the total Dutch share of the overall
slave trade accounted for only 16 percent. During the crucial eighteenth century
British ships transported nearly 42 percent of the slaves who left Africa; the
Dutch Dutch share amounted to only 5.7 percent. In view of the absence of more conclusive
data, and and keeping in mind the fact that even Dutch slave trading was overwhelmingly
in Protestant hands, these figures at least help to indicate the small
parameters of of any "Jewish contribution" to the the total slave trade.
//
Jews and Jewish names are virtually absent from the texts and indexes of scholarly
works on the Atlantic slave trade and from recent monographs on the French,
Dutch, Portuguese, and British branches of the commerce. Clearly Jews were not
prominent in the British Royal African Company or the Dutch West India
Company (although in 1677 the WIC made an asiento 4 with Diego Nunes
Belmonte which was never implemented). According to the eminent historian
Seymour Drescher, who draws on the Dutch historians Pieter C. Emmer and
Johanes Menne Postma, Jews played a very limited and subordinate role even at
the height of the Dutch slave trade: "They did not serve on the Heren X, the directorate
of the Dutch West India Company. Their investment share amounted to
only 0.5 percent (or one two-hundredth) of the company's capital." 5 Jews and Jewish names are virtually absent from the texts and indexes of scholarly
works on the Atlantic slave trade and from recent monographs on the French,
Dutch, Portuguese, and British branches of the commerce. Clearly Jews were not
prominent in the British Royal African Company or the Dutch West India
Company (although in 1677 the WIC made an asiento
Few Jews
appear among the merchants of Bristol, Liverpool, and London who purchased
over 2.5 million Africans in the eighteenth century. Yet if we expand the issue
beyond the slave trade itself, small numbers of Sephardi Jews and Marranos did
play a crucial role in refining and marketing sugar and then in shifting transatlantic
commerce, including the slave trade, from Portugal to northern Europe.
We must always remember, however, that most Marranos or New Christians were
Jews only in the Nazi racist sense of the concept. It was mainly persecution by
the Inquisition that kept alive any sense of non-Christian identity for succeeding
generations.
Throughout the Mediterranean, Jews had acquired expertise in refining and
marketing sugar, which until the eighteenth century was a much-desired luxury
only the wealthy could afford. Marranos and Italians were prominent in the international
sugar trade of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of them helped
to establish sugar plantations in Madeira and Sao Tome. Indeed, in 1493 when
Portugal was flooded with Jewish refugees from Spain, the government forcibly
baptized their children, large numbers of whom were separated from their parents
and shipped off to Sao Tome as colonists. Because Marranos were always suspect-
4 with Diego Nunes
Belmonte which was never implemented). According to the eminent historian
Seymour Drescher, who draws on the Dutch historians Pieter C. Emmer and
Johanes Menne Postma, Jews played a very limited and subordinate role even at
the height of the Dutch slave trade: "They did not serve on the Heren X, the directorate
of the Dutch West India Company. Their investment share amounted to
only 0.5 percent (or one two-hundredth) of the company's capital." 5 Few Jews
appear among the merchants of Bristol, Liverpool, and London who purchased
over 2.5 million Africans in the eighteenth century. Yet if we expand the issue
beyond the slave trade itself, small numbers of Sephardi Jews and Marranos did
play a crucial role in refining and marketing sugar and then in shifting transatlantic
commerce, including the slave trade, from Portugal to northern Europe.
We must always remember, however, that most Marranos or New Christians were
Jews only in the Nazi racist sense of the concept. It was mainly persecution by
the Inquisition that kept alive any sense of non-Christian identity for succeeding
generations.
Throughout the Mediterranean, Jews had acquired expertise in refining and
marketing sugar, which until the eighteenth century was a much-desired luxury
only the wealthy could afford. Marranos and Italians were prominent in the international
sugar trade of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of them helped
to establish sugar plantations in Madeira and Sao Tome. Indeed, in 1493 when
Portugal was flooded with Jewish refugees from Spain, the government forcibly
baptized their children, large numbers of whom were separated from their parents
and shipped off to Sao Tome as colonists. Because Marranos were always suspect-