![]() First edition cover | |
Author | David Liss |
---|---|
Cover artist | View Down a Corridor, by Hoogstraten |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Historical novel |
Published | 2003 (Random House) |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 394 |
ISBN | 978-0-8129-7032-6 |
OCLC | 49531074 |
The Coffee Trader is a historical novel by David Liss, set in 17th-century Amsterdam. The story revolves around the activities of commodity trader Miguel Lienzo, who is a Jewish refugee from the Portuguese Inquisition. Recovering from near financial ruin, he embarks on a coffee trading scheme with a Dutch woman, kept secret because it is forbidden by his community council. Miguel navigates the social structures of the Amsterdam business world, the politics of the council, and the plots of competitors bringing this new import to Europe. [1]
The character of Miguel Lienzo is the great-uncle of Benjamin Weaver, the protagonist of Liss's first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper . [2] This novel is set about 60 years earlier, but is not a prequel; as stated by Liss, Miguel Lienzo is a very different kind of character from the English great-nephew whom he would never meet.
The book has been published in translation into Chinese, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish. [3]
The year is 1659. Miguel Lienzo is in financial trouble as a result of some trades in sugar that have gone poorly. He is being pursued by his creditors and is looking for a way out of his current problems. His friend Geertruid persuades him to invest in coffee, a little-known commodity in Europe. After trying coffee for himself at a Turkish coffee house, he is convinced that there could be a market for the beverage in Europe. He devises a scheme to manipulate the price of coffee by buying up as much as possible on several exchanges around Europe simultaneously. Miguel gets Geertruid to front the money for the initial purchases, and he arranges for most of the foreign trades, ordering 90 barrels of coffee through an Amsterdam broker named Isaiah Nunes.
Meanwhile, Miguel is living with his younger brother Daniel and his young wife, Hannah, who is pregnant. Miguel owes money to Daniel as well as to other creditors, but his coffee scheme will take months to pay off, and he is on the verge of losing more money on some bad investments in a brandy futures contract. His long-time enemy Solomon Parido approaches him with overtures of friendship and an offer to connect Miguel with a buyer for the brandy futures. Though skeptical, Miguel goes through with the trade, only to see the price of brandy rise just before close of trading. While the trade mitigated Miguel's potential losses, it cost him money he might have earned if he had retained them. On the advice of Alonzo Alferonda, Miguel is able to earn a significant profit on whale oil futures, which costs Parido considerably and enables Miguel to pay off many of his debts and regain some standing in the community.
Several intrigues follow. Miguel finds a mutual attraction with his sister-in-law Hannah. Parido catches wind of Miguel's interest in coffee, and appears to have coffee interests of his own. Parido uses his influence with the Jewish ruling council, the Ma'amad, to censure Miguel. Miguel receives threats from creditors still waiting to be paid, even as he is himself waiting to be paid for his profits in the whale oil trade. He begins to have suspicions about Geertruid's trustworthiness and takes some of her coffee-investment money to pay some of his creditors. Miguel and Daniel's relationship is strained by many of these events.
When Nunes's coffee shipment arrives in Amsterdam, it appears that Nunes has promised it to both Parido and Miguel Lienzo. Parido and Lienzo place a wager on the final price of coffee for the day, and both attempt to manipulate the price in their favor. Miguel wins the wager and a considerable sum, but betrays Geertruid in the process, believing Geertruid to having been Parido's spy. He repays her initial investment, but cuts her out of the profits she was expecting.
Hannah deceives Daniel by informing him that their baby is actually Miguel's and, along with his bankruptcy, Daniel informs her that he is leaving the city and will grant her a divorce. She goes to Miguel's house and they plan to marry. Miguel learns that Geertruid was working for Alferonda, not Parido; he tries too late to make amends. Geertruid leaves the city with her companion, Hendrick, but not before Hendrick beats Miguel's sometime-friend Joachim in retribution for Miguel's betrayal. Miguel and Hannah have a son, Samuel, and later another boy. His prosperous future now lies securely in the coffee trade.
The Coffee Trader was published in 2003 to generally positive reviews. Several reviewers noted the novel's depth of historical detail, including mention of the three pages of bibliography at the end of the book. [4] [5] Others mention the intricacy of the plot; [4] [6] writing for The New York Times , Thomas Mallon described "the book's commercial plot to be as complicated as it is expert", [1] requiring occasional narrative recaps to help the reader keep track of its intricacies. Despite the "careful attention" to setting, Mallon wished for a bit more "time and place" as a break from the rapid and intricate plot. [1]
Writing in the Jewish Quarterly Review , Adam Sutcliffe identified The Coffee Trader as among "the underinvestigated emerging genre of the 'port Jew novel,'" citing as other examples In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh, The Nature of Blood by Caryl Phillips, and The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. [5] : 424
The novel shows considerable attention to historical detail. In the "historical note" appended to the novel, the author notes that many modern business methods, especially those having to do with the stock market, came into being in 17th-century Holland. [7] : 384–385 New York Times reviewer Thomas Mallon writes that the Amsterdam of the novel is "a kind of information age, where wealth follows from what one knows or can trick others into believing." [1] Historian Adam Sutcliffe also sees the seeds of modernity in the novel's portrayal of Amsterdam "as a crucible of modernity is based above all in the easy contact between Jews and non-Jews," but finds that Liss goes too far in this portrayal, saying that "there appears to be almost no cultural distance between... an intensely Calvinist [Dutch] society... [and] the Sephardim... steeped in their very different Iberian sensibility." [5] : 425 Sutcliffe concludes, "The commercial, cultural, and political modernity of this Amsterdam milieu underpins the familiar fascination of The Coffee Trader. The less recognizably modern aspects of Sephardic life are marginal to Liss's narrative, but they Liss has said that the novel was originally focused on the chocolate trade, but he switched the focal commodity because "coffee was a better fit" [2] and that ""coffee and business go so naturally together." [7] : 386 In an interview, Liss was asked whether Miguel was based on a particular historical figure; her replied that Miguel "is entirely made up based on the sort of character I wanted to see in that situation." [2]
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)SephardicJews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and seldomly as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is derived from the Hebrew Sepharad, can also refer to the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, who were also heavily influenced by Sephardic law and customs. Many Iberian Jewish exiled families also later sought refuge in those Jewish communities, resulting in ethnic and cultural integration with those communities over the span of many centuries.
The resettlement of the Jews in England was an informal arrangement during the Commonwealth of England in the mid-1650s, which allowed Jews to practise their faith openly. It forms a prominent part of the history of the Jews in England. It happened directly after two events. Firstly a prominent rabbi Menasseh ben Israel came to the country from the Netherlands to make the case for Jewish resettlement, and secondly a Spanish New Christian merchant Antonio Robles requested that he be classified as a Jew rather than Spaniard during the war between England and Spain.
Paradesi Jews immigrated to the Indian subcontinent during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Paradesi refers to the Malayalam word that means foreign as they were newcomers. These Sephardic immigrants fled persecution and death by burning in the wake of the 1492 Alhambra decree expelling all Jews who did not convert to Christianity from Spain, 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 the Netherlands began largely in the 16th century when they began to settle in Amsterdam and other cities. It has continued to the present. During the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in May 1940, the Jewish community was severely persecuted.
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 Sephardim 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 welcomed the Sephardic Jews. Many of the Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews, persons who had converted to Catholicism but continued to practice Judaism in secret. After they had settled in the safety of the Netherlands, many of them 'returned' fully to practice of the Jewish religion.
A Conspiracy of Paper is a historical-mystery novel by David Liss, set in London in the period leading up to the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720.
Miguel Barrios was a poet and historian from a converso family who joined the community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam. He was born in Montilla, Spain and died in Amsterdam. Miguel was the son of Simon de Barrios—who also called himself Jacob Levi Canizo—and Sarah Valle. His grandfather was Abraham Levi Canizo.
Solomon Ayllon was haham of the Sephardic congregations in London and Amsterdam, and a follower of Shabbethai Ẓebi. His name is derived from the town of Ayllon, in what is now the province of Segovia.
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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. Still, many Jews faced persecution from English merchants.
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Francisco Lopes Suasso, second Baron d'Avernas le Gras was a banker and financier of the Dutch Republic. He was also known within the Sephardic Jewish community as Abraham Israel Suasso.
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