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Maarten Janssen, 2014-

PSCR1399

1672. Carta de Raquel Castaños para Paulo Jácome Pinto, representante dos judeus portugueses.

Author(s) Raquel Castaños      
Addressee(s) Paulo Jácome Pinto      
In English

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.

Paul Jácome Pinto, the addressee of many of the letters in this set seized at the end of the 17th century, was a Portuguese Jew with great political and social relevance, since he represented the Jews living in New Zealand and negotiated the settlement of Cayenne with the Jewish communities that came from Brazil and Livorno (Oppenheim, 1909). He also played an important role in the commercial networks established between Jews, in particular regarding the flow of raw materials from the overseas colonies, and destined for the main European markets.

HELLER, Reginaldo (2008). Diáspora Atlântica. A Nação Judaica no Caribe, séculos XVII e XVIII. [tese de Doutoramento em História]. Niterói: Universidade Federal Fluminense.

The author recalls the sending of a certain merchandise.

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Ao señor paulo jacome pinto gde deus Com o mestre q Deus leve em pas em medelburgo señor paulo jacome pinto serinan 20 de setienbro 1672

por o navio que partio do capitãn suitilinge en 30 de agosto escrivi a v m do que se ofresia y agora faso estas quatro Regras para dar quuberta ao segundo conesimento de un baril de asucar que en dito asima enbarquei con tt 610 nto marcado con RC a consinar a david de montesinos que v m o Resebera y tera à sua orden y como digo o teño feito não so mais larga so Reencomendar me eu y a minha filha muy de corasan en merse da señora prima y tia y pficamos con grande quydado que deus nos alegre con bon suseso que se ay tido na gera y nos sustente a todos con pas y saude y v m a gose largos y felises anos

de v m Raquel castanos

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