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This book surveys the role of Amsterdam's Sephardic merchants in the westward expansion of sugar production and trade in the seventeenth-century Atlantic. It offers an historical-geographic perspective, linking Amsterdam as an emerging staple market to a network of merchants of the "Portuguese Nation," conducting trade from the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil. Examining the "Myth of the Dutch," the "Sephardic Moment," and the impact of the British Navigation Acts, Yda Schreuder focuses attention on Barbados and Jamaica and demonstrates how Amsterdam remained Europe's primary sugar refining center through most of the seventeenth century and how Sephardic merchants played a significant role in sustaining the sugar trade.
List of contents
1. The Atlantic Sugar Trade: Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants in the Seventeenth Century.- 2. The Development of the Sephardic Jewish Sugar Trade Network.- 3. The British Caribbean World: Barbados.- 4. Amsterdam's Dutch and Sephardic Merchants in the Atlantic Supply Trade and the Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century.- 5. The Mission of Menasseh Ben Israel and Cromwell's Western Design.- 6. Sephardic Merchants and the Second Barbados: Jamaica.- 7. The Atlantic Sugar Trade at the End of the Seventeenth Century.
About the author
Yda Schreuder is Professor Emerita of Geography at the University of Delaware and Research Associate at the Hagley Museum and Library, USA.
Summary
This book surveys the role of Amsterdam’s Sephardic merchants in the westward expansion of sugar production and trade in the seventeenth-century Atlantic. It offers an historical-geographic perspective, linking Amsterdam as an emerging staple market to a network of merchants of the “Portuguese Nation,” conducting trade from the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil. Examining the “Myth of the Dutch,” the “Sephardic Moment,” and the impact of the British Navigation Acts, Yda Schreuder focuses attention on Barbados and Jamaica and demonstrates how Amsterdam remained Europe’s primary sugar refining center through most of the seventeenth century and how Sephardic merchants played a significant role in sustaining the sugar trade.
Report
"This book is clearly a work of love. ... It is a well-written, well-documented overview of trade, trade networks, and the intersection of geopolitics during a dynamic century during which the foundations of empire were being laid. ... this volume is a very good overview of the different strands at play during this formative time in European colonialism." (Jessica Vance Roitman, Studia Rosenthaliana, Vol. 47 (1), 2021)
