The Jews and the Slave Trade

Some years ago the Nation of Islam, a Muslim-ish African-American group, published a book claiming that “the Jews” had dominated the slave trade. I think the point was to say that the alleged activity of one group of people in the 16th-19th Centuries says something about another group of people in the 20th-21st Centuries. The book was shredded by scholars, but they did say that for a moment Jews were significant in the Brazilian and Caribbean slave trades.

I am no expert, but have been reading a little around that period. Of course, the “Jews” in question were baptised Christians of Jewish origin. We don’t know what they believed. The strong probability is that all or most of them had never seen an Ashkenazi Jew and – if we focus on the mid-16th Century – it would be another two hundred and fifty years before any of their descendants who returned to Judaism might have considered an Ashkenazi Jew as belonging to the same “tribe”, someone they might consider marrying.

My impression is that a few New Christian families were involved in the Atlantic slave trade for a period starting in the mid-16th Century. I keep seeing the Dias name. I suspect that one or some of them had been involved in the Portuguese trade with India, and had seen an opportunity along the way.

Some of the Dias’ presumed relatives owned sugar plantations in Brazil, so will have owned slaves. These Brazilian relatives fought for the Catholic Portuguese against the philo-Jewish Protestant Dutch in the 1640s. A few decades later a slave-trader in Cartagena, in Spanish Latin America, was accused of “judaising”. I suspect he was somehow related to or connected to the Dias family, and possibly also to my own ancestors.

With hindsight, the African slave trade is a unique phenomenon. At the outset – and I am speculating – maybe it was no different from other forms of 16th Century slavery. Muslims enslaved Christians, including prisoners of war. There were Algerian slave raids as far north as England and Ireland. In Iberia and elsewhere, Christians enslaved Muslims and Jews. Criminals could become galley slaves.

Christians, Muslims and Jews were all clear that their adherents could not enslave other adherents, but people of other religions did not merit human rights. Before it developed onto an industrial scale, the African slave trade seems to have involved members of one African tribe traded by another tribe for European products.

But what about the Dias and other families involved in slavery? Confessionally they were Catholics of Jewish origin and, as far as I can tell, their descendants seem to have been overwhelmingly Catholic. The probability is that their parents or grandparents would have been Jewish. My first thought is that how can someone whose family has been exiled and persecuted then commit the same crime to other people. Historians would tell us that we should not use our values to judge people from another age, but still… Aren’t basic values unchanging?

Perhaps a psychologist would tell us that these people had been severely traumatised and therefore were willing and able to objectify other people, especially when they might have benefitted from the crime (and it was a crime).

Of course, to blame one group of 21st Century people for the actions of an unconnected group of 16th Century people is silly. Arguably it requires the same mentality as the slave traders: to dehumanise people in their imagination, and then draw unethical conclusions.

The Jews of Goa, 1639

The Jews, who live in Goa, have there their Temples and Synagogues, and enjoy an absolute liberty of Conscience. They are either Indians born of, Father and Mother, Jews, or they come out of Palestine; these last, for the most part, speak the Spanish tongue.

Mandelslo’s Travels, Page 86

Indian Jews using Amsterdam prayer books, 1816

Bishop Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta - whose diocese covered all India - visited the Cochin Jews at Mattancherry in 1816. What caught my eye is that this community was using prayer books imported all the way from Amsterdam.

I wonder how early contact was made between the European Sephardim and the Cochin Jews. Presumably there were secret Jews in the Portuguese colony of Goa. Also, Sephardi diamond merchants are known to have been in Madras in the late 17th Century.

"The year 1816 was chiefly spent by the Bishop in visiting his widespread diocess. He proceeded first to Madras, next to Bombay; but as no journal appears to have been kept of his progress, the particulars which the author gives of it are few and not very satisfactory. On his return to Calcutta he touched at Goa, and also at Cochin, near which is Mattencherry [Mattancherry], the residence of a sect of Jews, whose history is curious. The town is altogether unlike any other in India; the streets are regular, the houses, which are in general two stories high, have doors and windows after the European fashion and are repeatedly whitewashed; the countenances of their inhabitants are perfectly fair, compared with the Indian face in general, and yet they have all the Jewish physiognomy. Their synagogue is like those of the Jews in Europe, and their history is as follows:-
‘Their history, according to their own account, is this: that they belong to the tribe of Benjamin, Judah and half Mannasseh, and that their forefathers left Sappanat (probably the same with Sepharad mentioned in Obadiah 20) after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; that they originally dwelt at Cragnore, from which they were driven by the Inquisition of Goa about 300 years since; and that soon after they were settled at Cochin, they assisted the Dutch against the Portugeuse. With regard to the dispersion of their nation, one story current among them is, that the ten tribes are to this day beyond the river Sambattin [Sambation], which is continually throwing up stones and earth to prevent their return; except on the Sabbath, on which day, as their law forbids them to stir, the miracle is suspended! They all believe that they shall be restored to the Holy Land in peace, in the year 1839, and that the temple is then to be rebuilt by the freemasons, with Solomon at their head. They are perfectly enraged at the mention of Jesus as the Messiah. They have a high veneration for the book of Job; and believe the house of Esau to be the Christians! Shiloh they interpret as the name of a city, and the prophesy which says, his name shall be called Emmanuel, they apply to Hezekiah. They read the whole psalter frequently in their houses; the ninety-first psalm every night. They follow the customs of the Portuguese Jews, and have their books from Amsterdam.’ – vol. i. pp. 261, 262."

Source: Life of Dr. Middleton. Published in The Monthly review. 1831. Page 540.