Successful, modern Jews in the Hague, 1743

The paragraph below is from the description of the Hague published in 1743. I suspect the author is not as cultured as he may wish us to believe. He was probably presented with a prayerbook, as would happen today. I suspect that a lot of the apparently learned digressions into matters of religion in books of this period is simply a way of showing off ones alleged superior intellect and sensibility, just as one might create a blog today.

The author(s) also mentions that Mr. Swartzo [Suasso?] the Jew has the nicest house in the area. Elsewhere we hear that the “opulent and magnificent M. Lopez, a Jew” organised a kind of opera in the city, including foreign artistes. We get the impression that – at the same time that New Christians were being persecuted by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, some of their relatives in the Hague were living wealthy, sophisticated and integrated lives in the Netherlands.

“The Jewish Synagogue stands here [in New Voorhout, The Hague], which has not been long built, and does not front the Street. It is very neat and fine within, and is well worth being seen by the curious Traveller; which Pleasure he may have every Saturday, the Sabbath of the Jews. One may understand the Worship of the Old Testament, and the Jewish Rites and Antiquities better by seeing a Synagogue, and being present in Time of Worship, than by the tedious dry Study of all the Books in the World: The Method of acquiring Knowledge by the Eye is easy and pleasant. The Jews in their Synagogues are civil enough to Strangers, if they behave with any Degree of Decency: They present them with an Hebrew Bible to read in, and accommodate them in other Respects.”

A Description of Holland: or, The present state of the United Provinces. 1743. Pages 26-27

Livorno

On 10 June 1593 Jews received rights in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In showing the Jews more respect than their rival states, the Medici attracted Jewish settlement and commerce to the city of Livorno (then called Leghorn in English). Tuscany quickly became a player in the East-West Mediterranean trade that had formerly been dominated by Genoa and Venice. Regardless of who dominated the seas – Dutch, French or English – the trade still flowed.

I used to think that the decline of this trade was a consequence of all the wars. The Mediterranean was no longer safe for shipping. I begin to wonder if the absolute and relative economic decline of the Ottoman Empire was the real cause. Once, spices and other exotic items came from the eastern Mediterranean. By the 18th Century there were trade routes that circumvented the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps the defeat at Vienna in 1683 marked the moment at which the Turks went into decline. Economic growth in Europe and new markets in the Americas and Asia meant that the Turkish trade became a backwater. For Jews, who operated as middlemen in this trade, the options were to accept this change in circumstances or leave. The Jews of Livorno lived by this trade. Certainly a number of Livornese Jews moved to Amsterdam and London in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. Others seem to have moved to Arab ports such as Alexandria or Tunis, perhaps to use their skills in the local market.

Maybe the last gasp of Livorno as a major port was the Napoleonic Wars. I have seen that Tunis was France’s main market in Africa, and it seems likely that (notwithstanding the British naval blockade) much of this trade passed through Livorno.

The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was overrun by the French revolutionary armies in 1799. It was then abolished. Between 1801 and 1807, Livorno was part of the short-lived Kingdom of Etruria, a French client-state. That state was then abolished, and territory became part of metropolitan France. Livorno was made capital of the new département of Méditerranée which, incidentally, included the island of Elba to which Napoleon was exiled in 1814.

The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was reconstituted after Napoleon’s defeat. The Government was overthrown by a popular revolution in 1859. Livorno was briefly part of the short-lived United Provinces of Central Italy, but voted for annexation by Piedmont-Sardinia in 1860. Italy was unified around Piedmont-Sardinia. With Italian unification, Livorno became just one of many Italian ports.

The image of Livorno above is somewhat romanticised, but note the two men in the right foreground. One merchant is in European dress and the other oriental.

The Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Germany, 1825

The Portuguese and Spanish Jews, but especially the former, have long held a high rank among their nation. Persecution drove numbers of them, from time to time, to Germany, whither they carried with them considerable treasures, These they invested in the public funds of England, France and Holland; and hence they soon became distinguished for that ambiguous sort of speculation in the stocks, which is more allied to the practices of gambling than of honest trade. They have kept themselves in a great measure distinct from the German Jews, whom they look upon as an inferior race; and they form a separate congregation, with religious rites and ceremonies peculiar to themselves.

The Monthly Review article by M. Paul Van Hemert, translated from Dutch by Lewis Jackson. State of the Jews in the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. London, 1825.