Jews in the plantation economy of the Antilles

From the seventeenth century onward, Sephardic Jews and Conversos who had returned to Judaism settled in the Caribbean colonies, taking advantage of the expansion of Dutch and British power and the relative tolerance that sometimes prevailed there. Curaçao, under Dutch dominion, was home to the Mikvé Israël community, whose Snoa synagogue (1732) is the oldest still in use in the Americas, and which sent branches to other islands and to the mainland. In Surinam, the community of Jodensavanne constituted an exceptional case of a nearly autonomous Jewish agricultural settlement at the heart of the forest. In Barbados, Jamaica, and elsewhere, Jews participated in Atlantic trade and the sugar plantation economy, which rested on slavery. These communities, situated at the crossroads of Sephardic networks linking Amsterdam, London, and the New World, form a still little-known chapter of the post-1492 Sephardic diaspora.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗