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Moses Cohen Henriques (born c. 1595) was a Dutch pirate of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin. Operating in the Caribbean, the total haul of his raids on the Spanish is estimated to be about 1 billion USD in today's value. [1] [2] [3]
Henriques was born in the late 16th century to a Portuguese converso family (Jews who had undergone forced conversion to Catholicism during the Portuguese Inquisition). [3] His family immigrated at a certain stage to the Netherlands, whereupon they resumed the free practice of their Jewish faith. [3]
Henriques served under Dutch naval officer and folk hero Admiral Piet Pieterszoon Hein, of the Dutch West India Company, rising in the ranks to become his right hand man. He aided in the capture of a Spanish treasure fleet in the battle of the Bay of Matanzas off the Cuban coast, during the Eighty Years' War, in 1628. [1]
Part of the Spanish fleet in Venezuela had been warned because a Dutch cabin boy had lost his way on Blanquilla Island and was captured, betraying the plan, but the other half from Mexico continued its voyage, unaware of the threat. Sixteen Spanish ships were intercepted; one galleon was taken after a surprise encounter during the night, nine smaller merchants were talked into a surrender; two small ships were taken at sea fleeing; and four fleeing galleons were trapped on the Cuban coast in the Bay of Matanzas. After some musket volleys from Dutch sloops their crews surrendered and the Dutch captured 11,509,524 Dutch guilders of booty in gold, silver, and other expensive trade goods, such as indigo and cochineal, without any bloodshed. The Dutch did not take prisoners: they gave the Spanish crews ample supplies for a march to Havana.
After the war, Henriques scouted the Portuguese colony of Pernambuco on the Brazilian coast. He did this as a spy, in preparation for a Dutch invasion. [3]
Henriques then went on to lead a Jewish contingent in Brazil as part of the Dutch invasion in 1630. He led a force of 3000 men, capturing the colony and turning it into a refuge for Jews. During the subsequent Dutch rule, Henriques was instrumental in bringing a rabbi to the colony, as well as building a mikvah and synagogue (the kahal zur Israel synagogue) - all firsts for the New World. However, in 1654, the Portuguese recaptured the nascent colony, forcing Henriques and other Jews to flee from religious persecution. [4]
After the Portuguese Empire's recapture of Northern Brazil in 1654, Moses fled South America and in order to survive difficult times ended up as a trusted advisor to Henry Morgan, the leading pirate of the time. He established his own pirate island off the Brazilian coast, in order to take revenge against the Spanish and the Portuguese. [2] Even though his role as a pirate was disclosed during the Spanish Inquisition, he was never caught and never faced trial. [1] [2] [3]
After the English conquest of Jamaica, Henriques migrated to the island, where he helped to establish the Jewish community in Jamaica. Morgan, who became the governor of Jamaica, gave Henriques a full pardon in 1681. [3]
Piet Pieterszoon Hein was a Dutch admiral and privateer for the Dutch Republic during the Eighty Years' War. Hein was the first and the last to capture a large part of a Spanish treasure fleet which transported huge amounts of gold and silver from Spanish America to Spain. The amount of silver taken was so large that it resulted in the rise of the price of silver worldwide and the near bankruptcy of Spain.
The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and phased out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began hunting and prosecuting pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1650s to the 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas. Piracy in the Caribbean was part of a larger historical phenomenon of piracy, as it existed close to major trade and exploration routes in almost all the five oceans.
The history of the Jews in Colonial America begins upon their arrival as early as the 1650s. The first Jews who came to the New World were Sephardi Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam. Later major settlements of Jews would occur in the port cities: Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah.
The history of the Jews in Latin America began with conversos who joined the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the continents. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 led to the mass conversion of Spain's Jews to Catholicism and the expulsion of those who refused to do so. However, the vast majority of conversos never made it to the New World and remained in Spain slowly assimilating to the dominant Catholic culture. This was due to the requirement by Spain's Blood Statutes to provide written documentation of Old Christian lineage to travel to the New World. However, the first Jews came with the first expedition of Christopher Columbus, including Rodrigo de Triana and Luis De Torres.
Paradesi Jews refer to Jewish immigrants to the Indian subcontinent during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal. Paradesi means foreign in Malayalam and Tamil. These Sephardic immigrants fled persecution and death by burning in the wake of the 1492 Alhambra Decree and King Manuel's 1496 decree expelling Jews from Portugal. They are sometimes referred to as "White Jews", although that usage is generally considered pejorative or discriminatory and refers to relatively recent Jewish immigrants, predominantly Sephardim.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese Jews emigrated to a number of European cities outside Portugal, where they established new Portuguese Jewish communities, including in Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, which remained connected culturally and economically, in an international commercial network during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The community of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, was of major importance in the seventeenth century. The Portuguese Jews in the Netherlands did not refer to themselves as "Sephardim", but rather as "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation." The Portuguese-speaking community grew from conversos, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, who rejudaized under rabbinical authority, to create an openly self-identified Portuguese Jewish community. As a result of the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, as well as the religious persecution by the Inquisition that followed, many Spanish and Portuguese Jews left the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some migrated to the newly independent Dutch provinces which allowed Jews to become residents. Many Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews. Others had been sincere New Christians, who, despite their conversion, were targeted by Old Christians as suspect. Some of these sought to return to the religion of their ancestors. Ashkenazi Jews began migrating to the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century, but Portuguese Jews viewed them with ambivalence.
Dutch Brazil, also known as New Holland, was a colony of the Dutch Republic in the northeastern portion of modern-day Brazil, controlled from 1630 to 1654 during Dutch colonization of the Americas. The main cities of the colony were the capital Mauritsstad, Frederikstadt, Nieuw Amsterdam (Natal), Saint Louis, São Cristóvão, Fort Schoonenborch (Fortaleza), Sirinhaém, and Olinda.
Isaac Aboab da Fonseca was a rabbi, scholar, kabbalist, and religious writer. In 1656, he was one of several elders within the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam and for a time in Dutch Brazil before the Portuguese reconquest. He was one of the religious leaders who excommunicated philosopher Baruch Spinoza in 1656.
The Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at Mr. Visserplein 3 in Central Amsterdam, Amsterdam, in the North Holland region of The Netherlands. The synagogue was completed in 1675. Esnoga is the word for synagogue in Judaeo-Spanish, the traditional Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardi Jews.
The history of the Jews in Brazil begins during the settlement of Europeans in the new world. Although only baptized Christians were subject to the Inquisition, Jews started settling in Brazil when the Inquisition reached Portugal, in the 16th century. They arrived in Brazil during the period of Dutch rule, setting up in Recife the first synagogue in the Americas, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, as early as 1636. Most of those Jews were Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands.
Samuel Pallache was a Jewish Moroccan merchant, diplomat, and pirate of the Pallache family, who, as envoy, concluded a treaty with the Dutch Republic in 1608. His antecedents fled to Morocco during the Reconquista. Appointed as an agent under the Saadi Sultan Zidan Abu Maali, Pallache traveled to the newly-independent Dutch Republic to discuss diplomatic terms with the Dutch against their mutual enemy, the Spanish. He died in the Netherlands, brought there due to the intervention of his ally, Maurice of Nassau, who helped him when he was arrested by the Spanish.
Henriques is a common surname in the Portuguese language, namely in Portugal and Brazil. It was originally a patronymic, meaning Son of Henrique (Henry). Its Spanish equivalent is Enriquez and its Italian equivalent is D'Enrico. Not Jewish in origin but some Sephardic Jews adopted this name.
The Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue was a former Jewish synagogue, located at 197 Rua do Bom Jesus, in the old city of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil.
Henriques is a Portuguese surname meaning Son of Henrique (Henry). The Henriques family has many branches, each with a somewhat different surname. In 16th century Portugal, dozens of New Christian families used the name singly or in combination with others, such as Henriques de Castro, Cohen Henriques Eanes, Henriques de Souza, Henriques de Sousa, Henriques Faro, Mendes Henriques, Gabay Henriques, Lopes Henriques, Gomes Henriques, Henriques da Costa, Henriques da Granada, Henriques Coelho, and many more. Once they left Portugal and reverted to Judaism, they took more Jewish first names and often inserted Jewish tribal designations, such as Cohen and Israel, just before "Henriques", such as Cohen Henriques and Israel Henriques.
A Jewish population has been in Barbados almost continually since 1654.
The history of the Jews in Jamaica predominantly dates back to migrants from Spain and Portugal. Starting in 1509, many Jews began fleeing from Spain because of the persecution of the Holy Inquisition. When the English captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, the Jews who were living as conversos began to practice Judaism openly. By 1611, the Island of Jamaica had reached an estimated population of 1,500 people. An estimated 75 of those people were described as "foreigners," which may have included some Portuguese Jews. Many Jamaican Jews were involved in the Atlantic slave trade, both owning and trading in enslaved Black people.
Jewish pirates were Jewish people who engaged in piracy. While there is some mention of the phenomenon in antiquity, especially during the Hasmonean period, most Jewish pirates were Sephardim who operated in the years following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 ordering the expulsion of Iberia's Jews. Upon fleeing Spain and Portugal, some of these Jews became pirates and turned to attacking the Catholic empires' shipping as both Barbary corsairs from their refuge in the Ottoman dominions, as well as privateers bearing letters of marque from Spanish rivals such as the United Netherlands.
The history of the Jews in Suriname starts in 1639, as the English government allowed Spanish and Portuguese Jews from the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy to settle the region, coming to the old capital Torarica.
