Studia Rosenthaliana - Volume 49, Issue 1, 2023

The Atlantic trade in enslaved people became an economic, social, political, and legal issue in the seventeenth century. Portuguese Jews became involved in the trade in enslaved people and the debate about its legality in this same chronology. Portuguese Jews, some of whom had lived as so-called New Christians or conversos, blended legal traditions ranging from the Spanish ‘School of Salamanca’ which was a legal center that grappled with the myriad issues raised by the Spanish colonization of the new territories, Talmudic jurisprudence, Iberian interpretations of Roman Law, and Jewish, Christian, and Greek philosophy, as well as Christian theology. As resident ‘foreigners’ in the Dutch Republic, some of these people became prominent legal scholars who produced rulings and discussions relating to this Jewish presence in the Dutch Republic. One such jurist was Ishac Athias, who wrote a legal treatise in 1627 with the title of Thesoro de Preceptos [Treasure of Precepts]. In this work he expresses his conceptions of dominium (lordship/ mastery) and libertas (freedom from servitude), framed by a discussion of the Talmudic concept of Canaanite slavery. The focus of this research article is to explore how Athias contributes to the legal debate on slavery and the slave trade, and the naturalization of the law of nations that was raging in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) relied on the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam to ensure that the White or Paradesi Jews in Cochin were suitable to be their social and economic partners. The Portuguese Jews were interested in this partnership as well. Yet there was another group of Jews in Cochin. These were the Black or Malabari Jews. The relationships between the trading company and three distinct Jewish groups raise fundamental issues in terms of religious, social, and economic interactions. This article uses the Notísias (‘News’), written by Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva, the main member of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish delegation to Cochin, to show that there was an ideological basis for the social differentiation made between White or Paradesi Jews and Black or Malabari Jews. This categorization allowed Pereyra de Paiva to produce a text that both his co-religionists in Amsterdam and the Paradesi Jews who had welcomed him would see in a positive light.

Historians have rarely studied early modern Jewish diplomacy, of which Jewish petitioning was a part. They hypothesize that early modern antisemitism and their minority status as a group without its own state prevented early modern Jewish communities from having any form of political power. However, according to historian David Biale, a typical example of ‘Jewish power’ is Jewish influence on political policy. This article demonstrates that the Jewish community used petitions directed at the city government of Amsterdam, the provincial states, and the stadholder. Their arguments were based on economics, legal precedent, loyalty, and the narrative of exile. As I show, these rhetorical techniques were successful.

Sephardic Jews were involved in the burgeoning Atlantic trade of the seventeenth century, which linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas. As a highly mobile community, they may have lived in various places throughout their lives. As the Sephardic community settled in Amsterdam in the early-to-mid seventeenth century, they had to contend with issues that these travels brought to the fore, one of which was the boundary between enslavement and paid employment. While living in the Americas, Sephardic merchants often had enslaved people working in their households. What happened, though, when they brought these people to Amsterdam? By a close reading of the scant documentation available, this article shows the agency – and its limits – of two young women of African descent who were employed as enslaved domestic workers by a Sephardic merchant.

From the last decades of the nineteenth century, Dutch Jews increasingly moved to the Dutch East Indies, which at this time were opened up to individual citizens to pursue a career. Members of the Dutch political, financial, and cultural elites were overrepresented among the (Jewish and non-Jewish) ‘Indiëgangers’, or ‘Indies travellers’. Colonial society provided Jews with novel opportunities, as their Jewish background seemed to matter less than their Dutch citizenship, their education, their occupational position, their connections, their wealth, or the colour of their skin. This article sheds light on the meaning of this imperial dimension for Jews in the pre-war Dutch East Indies, by analysing the patterns of upward social mobility and integration of 38 Jewish migrants whose lives were recorded in the Dutch Biography Portal. These Jews were well-represented in traditional occupations, but they also attained important positions in the colonial civil service. Compared to their counterparts who did not migrate, they were less likely to be religious Jews or members of Jewish organisations. They were more often married to non-Jewish, as well as non-religious, spouses. High levels of integration did not, however, protect these Jewish migrants from antisemitism, particularly directed at those who supported Indonesians’ rights.

European Jews and their experiences during the Second World War in Europe are a well-covered subject. However, their experiences in Asian colonies during the same period have been examined far less, especially their experiences in the Dutch East Indies. In this article, I examine the experiences of European Jews (including European refugees) just before and during the Japanese occupation in the Dutch East Indies. My goal is to challenge the conventional view that Japanese authorities blindly followed the demands of their German allies to single out Jews for worse treatment than that meted out to other Europeans. I base my analysis on ego documents, including eyewitness accounts and memoires, supplemented with newspaper articles. These sources allow me to sketch a multi-layered picture of the experiences of European Jews in the Dutch East Indies during the Second World War and during the Japanese occupation. In the end, I argue that the Japanese took rather random measures against Jews, rather than systematically persecuting them as their German allies wanted.