Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

by Edward Kritzler

  1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock—one of the continent’s first permanent settlements by Europeans.

  1621: Dutch West India Co. formed; Pilgrims celebrate Thanksgiving modeled on Sukkoth.

  1622: Ecclesiatical coup in Jamaica transfers power over church to the Bishop of Hispaniola.

  1623: Jamaica’s Portuguese encourage Buckingham to invade with offer of gold mine.

  1624–1625: Dutch temporarily capture and occupy Bahia, Brazil.

  1624: Uriel da Costa excommunicated from Jewish community; Dutch settle New Amsterdam.

  1628: Moses Cohen Henriques and Piet Heyn capture silver fleet; Buckingham assassinated.

  1634: Dutch take Curaçao and Jews allowed to settle.

  1635–1639: Lima Inquisition destroys Jewish community.

  1640: Portugal regains independence; Columbus heir in Jamaica related to ruling Braganza line; “Bartholomew the Portuguese” assists invading English pirate; Uriel da Costa commits suicide.

  1642–1649: Mexico Inquisition destroys community—only 13 of 109 victims escape execution.

  1644: Converso Antonio de Montezinos claims he found Lost Tribes of Israel in Ecuador.

  1648–1650: Ukrainian peasants led by Bogdam Chmielnicki slaughter 100,000 Polish Jews.

  1650–1651: Menasseh Ben Israel’s book Hope of Israel, based on Montezinos’ claim, argues Messiah won’t come until Jews readmitted to England; Thurloe invites Ben Israel to England.

  1654: Portugal recaptures Brazil; Dutch Jews aboard one refugee ship are “detained” in Jamaica as suspect heretics; eventually twenty-three “proven Jews” are set free to sail to New Amsterdam.

  1655: DWIC authorizes Jewish settlement in New Amsterdam.

  1655: England captures Jamaica; Cromwell opens Jamaica and Barbados to Jewish settlement.

  1656: Robles trial in England; accused of being a Spaniard, Robles is freed when London’s Portuguese merchants come out as Jews and declare he is one of them. In Amsterdam, Spinoza is excommunicated for denying angels, the divine root of the Torah, and the immortality of the soul.

  1657: In England, London Jews open a synagogue in a house on Creechurch Lane.

  1657: Buccaneers of Tortuga invited to call Jamaica home.

  1661–1662: Charles on throne rejects petitions to expel Jews; backs “gold finding” Jews.

  1663: Six Jews arrive in Jamaica “on a royal mission to find a gold mine known to them.”

  1664: Jews banished; mission declared a fraud and Isaac Israel ordered to return king’s necklace.

  1664: New Amsterdam becomes New York.

  1665: New York Jews obtain freedom of worship and other advantages of English citizenship.

  1670: Morgan takes Panama; Madrid treaty recognizes English conquest; Cohen back in Jamaica.

  1671: Cohen buys land in isolated river valley.

  1672: Merchants try to expel Jews; Beeston charges Jews are aliens and seizes a Jew’s ship; Charles establishes Royal African Company for slave trade.

  1674: Surinam Jews petition to come to Jamaica.

  1675: Cohen vs. Cohen: Brothers’ Revealing Lawsuit.

  1675: Grand opening of Amsterdam synagogue, still used today.

  * * *

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  Introduction

  1. Fernand Braudel and Sian Reynolds (trans.), The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996), 823.

  2. Antonia Fraser, Cromwell: The Lord Protector (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 566.

  3. Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 60.

  Chapter One: Columbus and Jamaica’s Chosen People

  1. Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 192n: The youths outnumbered adult seamen fifty-seven to forty-two; most stayed loyal to Columbus, but it is not known how many were conversos.

  2. Quoted in Salvador de Madariaga, Christopher Columbus, Being the Life of the Very Magnificent Lord Don Cristobal Colon (New York: Christopher Columbus Publishing, 1967), 187.

  3. S. E. Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942), quotes the royal chronicler’s account of Santangel and his plea to the queen.

  4. Simon Wiesenthal, Sails of Hope: The Secret Mission of Christopher Columbus (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 166.

  5. http://www.sephardicstudies.org/decree.htm

  6. M. Hirsch Goldberg, The Jewish Connection (New York: Steimatzky/Shapolsky Publishing of North America, 1986), 87. In the Zohar (Book of Splendor), Moses de León (1250–1305) opined almost two hundred years before Columbus that “the earth revolves like a ball…when it is day on one-half of the globe, night reigns over the other half.”

  7. Zvi Dor-Ner, Columbus and the Age of Discovery (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 104, 105.

  8. Benjamin Keen, ed. and trans., The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son Ferdinand (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 264–65. Fernando’s description comes from his book, written years later when he was fifty as a brief in support of his family’s lawsuit to recover rights granted Columbus: “No longer able to keep the ships afloat, we ran them ashore as far as we could, grounding them close together board and board, and shoring them up on both sides so they could not budge.”

  9. Ibid., 241–57.

  10. Padron Morales, Spanish Jamaica, trans. Patrick E. Bryan (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2003), 20: Fernando writes the view of St. Ann’s Bay from the caravel deck “seemed to [Columbus] the most beautiful of all those he had seen in the Indies.”

  11. John Boyd Thacher, Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His Remains As Revealed by Original Printed and Manuscript Records, vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 633–34: A copy of the letter was found among Spanish papers in 1655 when the English captured Jamaica. The original, never recovered, was said to belong to a Jamaican Jew whose ancestor was marooned with Columbus.

  12. Ibid., 634n.

  13. Ibid., 635n.

  14. Ibid., 635n.

  15. Washington Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896), 582.

  16. Ibid., 634.

  17. Samuel Eliot Morison, Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (New York: Heritage, 1963), 192.

  18. Washington Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 2, 614; Columbus, when questioned about the gold of Veragua, maintained he brought home no treasure, because, as he wrote, “I would not rob or outrage the country since reason requires that it should be settled, and then the gold may be procured without violence.”

  19. At the start of Columbus’s voyage two years before, Ovando refused him shelter in Hispaniola despite an approaching hurricane, and when the rescue ship arrived back in Hispaniola, Ovando freed the Poras brothers and threatened to punish the loyalists who had slain some of the rebels.

  20. Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 2, 567; Irving quotes his contemporary biographer Bartolome de Las Casas, The History of the Admiral, lib. 2, cap. 32: “To cheer and comfort those who were loyal [Columbus] promised on his return to Spain to throw himself at the feet of the Queen, and represent their loyalty and obtain for them rewards.”

  21. Keen, The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus, 272–73: the full story of the eclipse. A copy of R. Abraham Zacuto’s tables with the marginalia of Columbus is in the Colombian Library in Portugal.

  22. William B. Goodwin, Spanish and English Ruins in Jamaica (Boston: Meador Publishing Co., 1938), 13.

  23. Clarendon State Papers, vol. 1, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 14, no. 237. Clarendon’s handwritten translation of a spy’s “secret discoveries” to the Duke of Buckingham in 1623 to encourage him to conquer Jamaica assisted by the island’s Portugals.

  24. Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Ma
gellan (New York: Random House, 2003), 210. Juan d’Esquivel’s parents were the conversos Pedro d’Esquivel and Constanza Fernández de Arauz.

  25. Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, “Melilla: A Bit of Spain That Jews Never Left,” The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, August 29, 1996. Since 1497, Jews have been living in Melilla, having never been forced to choose between exile and conversion, and until many left after World War II, each extended family had its own synagogue.

  26. Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 2, 587.

  27. Morales, Spanish Jamaica, 18. Francisco Poras would return to hold a post in government. The Poras brothers were themselves conversos and had been placed on the fourth voyage by Columbus at the request of the treasurer of Castile, Alonso de Morales, who was amorously involved with their aunt.

  28. Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 2, appendix, 642. “Ferdinand had been receiving reports that the mansion Diego was building was actually a fortress and Diego designed to make himself ‘sovereign of the island.’” Reportedly Diego paced back and forth on the patio “awaiting news from Esquivel of the discovery of gold in Jamaica [that] he might declare himself Emperor of the Americas.” Irene A. Wright, “The Early History of Jamaica (1511–1536),” The English Historical Review 36, no. 141 (January 1921), 73. The king writes Diego (February 23, 1512) that he is informed that Esquivel has found more gold than he reported.

  29. Frank Cundall and Joseph Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, abstracted from the Archives of Seville (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1919), 2.

  30. From a letter referenced in Francis J. Osborne, S.J., History of the Catholic Church in Jamaica (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988), 482 n

  31: Peter Martyr to King Charles, September 9, 1526.31. Ibid., 3; Goodwin, Spanish and English Ruins in Jamaica, 204.

  Chapter Two: Adventuring in the New World

  1. Samuel Tolkowsky, They Took to the Sea (London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1964), 103–6. An excellent contemporary account of Zacuto and King Manuel.

  2. Irwin R. Blacker, ed., Hakluyt’s Voyages (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), 24–38.

  3. Tolkowsky, They Took to the Sea, 119–24; Louis B. Wright, Gold, Glory, and Gospel: The Adventurous Lives and Times of the Renaissance Explorers (New York: Athenaeum, 1970), 92–99; Paul Herrmann, The Great Age of Discovery, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), 80–84.

  4. Tolkowsky, They Took to the Sea, 122.

  5. Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 219–20.

  6. J. M. Cohen, ed. and trans., The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1969), 220–21. In a letter to Isabella, Columbus wrote: “I believe that earthly Paradise lies here, which no one can enter except by God’s leave.” Later the well-watered country of the Orinoco would be renamed Venezuela, Little Venice.

  7. Wright, Gold, Glory, and Gospel, 103; Charles David Ley, ed., Portuguese Voyages 1498–1663 (London: Everyman’s Library, 1965), 41–59. Report of discovery sent to King Manuel from Brazil May 1, 1500, by the notary Pedro Vaz de Caminha.

  8. Wright, Gold, Glory, and Gospel, 106–7; Ley, Portuguese Voyages 1498–1663, quotes notary’s account in Hakluyt Society, series 2, vol. 81 (London, 1898).

  9. K. G. Jayne, Vasco da Gama and His Successors 1460 to 1580 (Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, 2004, reprint of 1910 edition), 58.

  10. Germán Arciniegas, Amerigo and the New World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 123.

  11. Tolkowsky, They Took to the Sea, 123.

  12. Morison, The European Discovery of America, 288–96.

  13. Arciniegas, Amerigo and the New World, 204–7; Tolkowsky, They Took to the Sea, 119–25; Morison, The European Discovery of America, 227, 233, 272–312; Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 3–5.

  14. Tolkowsky, They Took to the Sea, 125–27; Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 5–9; Arciniegas, Amerigo and the New World, 246–48; Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Conflict and Opportunity in Europe’s Other Sea: The Adventure of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” American Jewish Historical Society (December 1982), vol. 2, 217. Portugal’s upper class looked down on the mercantile profession, which they relegated below the seven “mechanical arts” (peasant, hunter, soldier, sailor, surgeon, weaver, blacksmith). Conversos, only 10 percent of the population, constituted nearly 75 percent of the business community.

  15. Irene Wright, Early History of Cuba, 1492–1586 (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 27; Dagobert D. Runes, The Hebrew Impact on Western Civilization (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 730: “Jews were considered to be especially proficient as crossbowmen, and in some countries were admitted in considerable numbers to the noncommissioned ranks.”

  16. Manoel da Silveira Cardozo, The Portuguese in America, 590 B.C.–1974: A Chronology and Fact Book (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana, 1976); Harry Kelsey, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1986): There is also a statue of the explorer at Point Loma in San Diego, maintained by the National Park Service, and in 1992 a stamp was issued in his honor; Seymour Liebman, New World Jewry 1493–1825: Requiem for the Forgotten (New York: KTAV, 1982), 6: “The term Portuguese Jews was used by the inquisitors in the New World after 1528 for all Jews…despite the fact that many had been born in Spain decades after the Expulsion.” Only Old Christians possessing Limpieza de Sangre certificates—proof they were free of Jewish blood for four generations—were allowed to settle Empire lands.

  17. Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1966), 56–62: On March 19, 1497, it was decreed that all Jewish children ages four to fourteen were to be baptized the following Sunday; families who did not appear had their children seized by officials and baptized by force. Parents who didn’t also convert could leave Portugal but their children would remain and be given over to Christian families to be raised in the True Faith. It was in this manner that Isaac Abarvanel lost his twelve-year-old grandson.

  18. Swetschinski, “Conflict and Opportunity in Europe’s Other Sea,” 216–18; Jan Glete, Warfare at Sea, 1500–1650 (New York: Routledge Press, 2000), 86: “The commercial expansion was regarded as a threat to the established social order” Anita Libman Lebeson, Pilgrim People (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 4–7: As capitalists they invested in voyages, owned and captained oceangoing ships, and traded with fellow Jews and conversos settled in farflung seaports.

  19. Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Magellan (New York: Random House, 2003), 495–97.

  20. Seymour B. Liebman, “Hernando Alonso: The First Jew on the North American Continent,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 5, no. 2 (April 1963), 291–96; Seymour B. Liebman, “They Came with Cortes: Notes on Mexican-Jewish History,” Judaism 18, no. 1 (Winter 1969), 91–92; G. R. G. Conway, “Hernando Alonso, a Jewish Conquistador with Cortez in Mexico,” Publications of American Jewish Historical Society (1928), 10–25. The informer’s tale referenced an earlier incident in Hispaniola involving Alonso’s first son, noting Alonso then drank the wine he had poured over the child. Threatened with torture on the rack, the Judaizer confessed he had done so “in mockery of the sacrament of baptism.”

  21. Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 266.

  22. Ibid., 529, 777: Thomas quote (“Adventurous women went gaily to men still in their quilted armor”) is from Miguel Léon-Portilla, La Vision de Los Vencidos (Madrid, 1985); pages 148–64 consist of a reprint of Manuel da Silveira Cardoz, “Relacion de la conquista por imformantes anonimos de Tlatelolco.”

  23. Hugh Thomas, Who’s Who of the Conquistadors (London: Cassell, 2000), 193. Juan Ponce de Léon II, the son of Juan González, and the son of Antonio de Santa Clara, Juan’s friend from his early days in Cuba, authored on orders from the king the
Relación de Puerto Rico of 1582, the first chronicle of the island. See an English translation at http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/simultaneous/Text/eng_puerto_rico.htm.

  24. Thomas, Conquest, 359, 399.

  25. Ibid., 636.

  26. For Alonso, see http://www.geocities.com/lonogria_37/aBastard.htm; for Marina Gutiérrez Flores de la Caballeria, see http://pages.prodigy.net/bluemountain1/estrada1.htm.

  27. See www.Sephardim.com.

  28. A number of conversos in this chapter are identified in Thomas’s three acclaimed books on the period: The Conquest, Rivers of Gold, and Who’s Who of the Conquistadors. The source for many of his disclosures is from the monumental work of Juan Gill, Los Conversos y la Inquisición Sevillana, 5 vols. (Seville: University of Seville y las Fundacion El Monte, 2000–2002).

  29. Seymour B. Liebman, The Jews in New Spain (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1970), 46.

  30. Judah Gribetz, Edward L. Greenstein, and Regina Stein, The Timetables of Jewish History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Jewish History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 162.

  31. Liebman, The Jews in New Spain, 46, quotes Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga: After 1,500 years on the Iberian Peninsula, Sephardim were as much Spanish as Jewish: “The Jews of the Expulsion left behind a deeply judaized Spain, and went abroad no less Hispanified.”

  Chapter Three: The King’s Essential Heretics

  1. Frank Cundall and Joseph Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, abstracted from the Archives of Seville (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1919), 10–11.

  2. Ruth Pike, Enterprise and Adventure: The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 60, 89: In the 1530s, the Genoese were licensed to procure African slaves “to supply the needs of the expanding sugar industry on the islands,” and in 1535 transported a thousand slaves. Nowhere is it reported that Portuguese were sent. Irene Wright, “Sugar Industry in the Americas,” American Antiquity 21 (1916), 755–82; Irene Wright, “The History of the Early Sugar Industry in the West Indies from Documents of the Archives of the West Indies in Seville,” Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer Journal 54 (1915), 14–15: In 1527, New Seville’s sugar mill is described as “a good one, producing good sugar.”