PT | EN | ES

Main Menu


Powered by <TEI:TOK>
Maarten Janssen, 2014-

Facsimile view

1672. Carta de Aarão da Silva para a irmã Judica Capadoce.

Author(s) Aarão da Silva      
Addressee(s) Judica Capadoce      
In English

Family letter from Aarão da Silva to his sister Judica Capadoce.

The author reports to the addressee the difficulty in educating their nephew, not only in the introduction to the letters, but also in the adaptation to the work in the colony, for which he finds him poorly prepared. He complains a lot about his wayward attitude and suggests that he returns to his mother in Europe, if she so wishes, because in that land there is no great advancement for him.

Given the suspicion that the Sephardic communities were trafficking goods and information to the detriment of the English Crown, several ships coming from or going to the Netherlands on their behalf were intercepted. In fact, the provisions in the Cromwell Navigation Acts prohibited the commercial contacts of the English colonies with the Netherlands, Spain, France and their overseas possessions. The proceedings that were initiated, under the guard at the Supreme Court of Admiralty, arose in the context of four moments of great tension between those two powers: the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667); the 3rd Anglo-Dutch War (1672-1674); the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763); and, finally, the 4th Anglo-Dutch War (1781-1784). The documentation found on board and preserved in the archive - private correspondence and cargo records - was taken as documentary evidence of the practice of cargo smuggling at sea. The letters described here are also demonstrative of the quality of the relationships within Sephardic families (Jews and converted), with the existence of strategically distributed social networks: on the one side, the settlers positioned below the Equator, more precisely in one area of the West Indies’ Seven Provinces (in the Caribbean), as part of the Dutch overseas territories; on the other, family and business partners, located in the main ports in the North Atlantic, important centers of financial and commercial activities. Incidentally, in some of these letters we may observe the occurrence of loanwords of English and Dutch origin belonging to the lexical-semantic field of trade relations. Examples of this are “ousove” and “azoes”, for the English “hoshead” or the Dutch “okshoofd”, an ancient measure of volume. In the present case, we have a set of letters that were transported on board the Dutch vessels Het witte Zeepaard, Bijenkorf, Fort Zeeland and Gekroonde Prins. They were coming from the port of Paramaribo and bound for an important and strategic port of the Company of the West Indies - Flushing, in North America - through the Caribbean.

If there is no translation for the letter itself, you may copy the text (while using the view 'Standardization') and paste it to an automatic translator of your choice.

Page [1]r

Senora Irman Judica Capadose Serinão a pro 7bro 1672

Como ate agora não a vindo navio nihun desa nen aqui ai novide sobre q o fasa mais de dezervos en como vos tenho dado notisia en mtas q vos escrevi en q ocupava o noso sobro Jacob da silva pr não ter aqui nego nihun mais q o da plantajin e ter nela conta quando se fas asucar e no pren-sipio o entretiña em escrever alguns tempos o que fazia con tão ruim vontade Como se podera ver pr sua Letra e parese q se emfadó ja diso. o q oje faz e tratar de mentir sen q nen para q e en sua boca se não acha outra Couza; e o pior de tudo q quaxe me perdera o respto e qdo o reprendo se poim a rir Criansa e a deus grasas so inda capaz pa lhe quebrar os olhos o q tenho feito diversas vezes e tudo e malhar em ferro frio e Como vejo q não aproveita nada me Canso de fazelo; pelo q me resolvo a escrever nesta ocasião a sua main pa q en nihũm tempo se quexe de mi de q lhe não fis a saber; e lhe digo o q vos vereis me avize se quer q lho mande para essa q con sua respta o farei e pode ser q nela se emende e trate de ser homen pr ele se não afeisoa nada a estas terras e dis não ven ca a ter conta con o Ingenho e Cavalos e dis tem vontade de ser Joeleiro se nosa pra o quixer asi darei a noso pro de Martin lhe busque pesoa aonde aprenda e o q custar o satisfasa pr ma Conta e sabe deus o qto sinto o aver vindo a meu poder e sair mais bruto do q entrou tudo cauzado de ter pouco entendimto e não querer tomar con vontade o ensino q lhe dou, sem embargo de tudo digo a nosa pra se quer q fique nesta o deixe estar con a bensão de deus e Comforme me parese não sera Jamais homen pr viver aqui contra seu gosto; q he qto se ofrese deus vos gde E miña cuñada e sobra se vos recomendão muito etc

Voso Irmão Arão da Silva


Text viewWordcloudManuscript line viewPageflow viewSentence view