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Maarten Janssen, 2014-

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1758. Carta de David para o seu pai Salomão de Lima.

Author(s) David      
Addressee(s) Salomão de Lima      
In English

Letter from David to his father Salomão de Lima.

The author tells his parents about the encounter with a supposed relative, whose behavior he did not appreciate, and he also refers to the declared war to Spain by the king of England.

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.

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Queridos Pays de meu coracão Curacao 18 Abril 1758

Espero esta a Vms Gozando saude em compa de meus estimados Irmáos a qual Ds lhes continue como eu lhe dezeyjo Eu a Ds Gracas saude e me recomende coracão em Vms como em meus estimados Irmãos y a Vms em pedirlhes suas bencams com a de Ds que me cubre.

como depois de pesagh me vou a jamaica como ja lhes avisey não aver em este nada que fazer suplico a Vms não me escrevem the ter hua carta de my para saber donde a de adresar a carta para que me venha a mão y espero que Ds me dara furtuna para poder ajudar a Vms, com o meu coracão he asy me ajude Ds

avera algums dias me emcontrou um fulano Louzada e me dise ser meu parente e lhe respondy que o tinha por muita ditta mais o do não me fes nem hua cortesia nem servisio e me dise com bem ao adiante nos falaremos, ontem lhe encontro ao do, e me disse que tinha escrito a Vm debaixo de cuberta assi o robio de erasto para que Vm lhe mandase algua cousa para negosiar e que Vm não teria medo porque o podia mandar a Vm y a my e outra lhe escreveu para suplicar a Vm que dese lisensa para que cazase com sua filha lhe respondy que me admirava muyto que escreveu semelhante carta a Vm, porque eu não sou de entecão de ficar em esta Volte



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