Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. The Atlantic Sugar Trade: Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants in the Seventeenth Century

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 1-30

3. The Development of the Sephardic Jewish Sugar Trade Network

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 31-75

4. The British Caribbean World: Barbados

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 77-118

5. Amsterdam’s Dutch and Sephardic Merchants in the Atlantic Supply Trade and the Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 119-158

6. The Mission of Menasseh Ben Israel and Cromwell’s Western Design

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 159-197

7. Sephardic Merchants and the Second Barbados: Jamaica

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 199-231

8. The Atlantic Sugar Trade at the End of the Seventeenth Century

   • Yda Schreuder

   Pages 233-262

9. Back Matter

   Pages 263-287

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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.

• history of the Atlantic Sugar Trade
• The Trade Triangle
• Sephardic merchant community in Amsterdam and Barbados
• historical geography
• Sephardic Jewish Sugar Trade Network
• Dutch colonial trade
• Portuguese Jewish Merchants
• British Trade and Navigation Acts
• Anglo-Dutch Wars in Barbados
• Menasseh Ben Israel
• Jewish Diaspora
• Jewish trans-Atlantic trade network
• British Caribbean
• Sugar Revolution
• Amsterdam sugar market
• Navigation Acts
• Cromwell
• Sephardic Jews

“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)

• Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

  Yda Schreuder

Yda Schreuder is Professor Emerita of Geography at the University of Delaware and Research Associate at the Hagley Museum and Library, USA.

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