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Trading diasporas is a term coined by Philip D. Curtin to mean: "communities of merchants living among aliens in associated networks". [1]
Trading diasporas were formed as a result of international trade that resulted in the settlement of merchants in certain countries where they sold their products. Their importance to the global world was marked by their impact on the spread of cultures and ideologies of certain areas to the rest of the world.
The first mention of trading diasporas dates back around 2000 BCE when the Assyrian merchants traveled to the Anatolian Peninsula in order to sell their goods. [2] Trading diasporas in this period of time were created as a result of the Assyrian traders staying as "semi-permanent residents" in cities of the Anatolian Peninsula. Steve Gosch of the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire divides the Assyrian traders into two groups: "stayers", who permanently settled on the Anatolian peninsula, and "movers", who traveled back and forth in order to sell their goods. [3]
According to Jane Schneider, the merchants trading prior to 15th century were able to create "asymmetrical links between world regions." [4] Barry Gillis and Andre Gunder Frank go on to say that "the earliest world system contained the essential features of its modern counterpart: asymmetrical relationships between regions in the core and periphery, continuing struggles for hegemony within the core and alternating periods of expansion and contraction in the system as a whole." [4] This means that the relations between different regions in the early modern world were not perfect and differed from the international relations of the modern time. Trading diasporas were able to create cultural and economical ties with different regions rather than a political relationship.
There are several reasons for the creation of trading diasporas, some of which included a demand for products that were not available in particular regions of the world, the division of the world into small city states who wanted to create economic and cultural ties with the rest of the world and the willingness of people living in certain areas to create their communities abroad and to be represented by them. As Gosch explains, the "premodern world system was to some extent an "archipelago of towns" in which urban centers in Europe (Bruges, Ghent, Genoa and Venice), the Middle East (Cairo, Aden, and Hormuz), and Asia (Samarkand, Calicut, Kanchipuram, Malacca, Quanzhou and Hangzhou) were connected to one another by trade and shared in a common culture of commerce." [4] Strong empires like China and several European states were also using the merchants to create trading diasporas in order to gather information about a certain country and possibly exploit it either in the event of conflict or just for sociable reasons. During this time period, long distance trade "dealt largely if not exclusively with luxury goods or high value relative to their bulk." [5] Therefore, protection of trading diasporas in the countries where diasporas settled was important, as it guaranteed supply of luxury products into the country.
The Jewish diaspora in India in an area called Goa is considered one of the oldest and strongest of the Early Modern World diasporas. The migration of Jews to India can be marked by the discovery of the route to India through the South African coast by the Portuguese. [6] As Walter Fischel, the author of Leading Jews in the service of Portuguese India notes: "Already in 1498 there appeared in the vicinity of Goa on the island of Anjediva the first Western Jew to play a role in the Portuguese Indian history." [7] Prior to the diamond trade, Jews in Portugal were employed as letter carriers, translators and agents. [7] As the Portuguese expansion in India continued, Jews were able to create their own communities and practice their religious traditions. As Dutch traveler J. Van Linschoten noted "There are great numbers of Moores and Jews in all places of India as at Goa, Cochin and within the land… amongst the Indians they have their Synagogues… wherein they use all ceremonies according to their law." [8] Linschoten’s statement explains that Spanish Muslims–Moors and Jews were able to practice their religions in India. This meant that they were able to create communities within the Indian peninsula and preserve their culture and religion. Such cases strongly suggest that rather than living like Indians, Jews created diasporas which helped them preserve their identity. Jews in India were able to trade and practice their religion, unlike in Europe, where they were oppressed and killed. This meant that "a Jew could rise to power and prominence in public life and could become an agent and diplomat in the service of the Portuguese viceroy in Goa." [9]
As Fischel states Jews were also used by the Portuguese to negotiate with the Muslim rulers of India. This was due to the "skill, knowledge and linguistic abilities of non-Christians." [10]
Surat was a city in Gujarat which at the time of the Portuguese conquest on the northern shores of India became one of the most important trading centers of Asia. Jewish diaspora was closely related to Surat as Jewish merchants plied their commerce through Surat. They, for the most part were jewelers and diamond merchants. [11]
"They came from many parts of the world, from Constantinople, Safed, Baghdad and Portugal, Italy and England, as well as from Yemen, Persia and Jewish colony at Cochin–all attracted by the great economic potential and possibilities of Surat." [11] Therefore, Surat can be considered to be one of the largest centers of Jewish trading and diaspora.
Trading diasporas were important in a way that they were crucial in a process of establishing long-distance trade, "transfers of technology, imperial and colonial ventures, missionary campaigns, the transatlantic slave trade, and the development of global capitalism." [12] Therefore, trading diasporas were not always a positive community as it led to the establishment of the slave trade and colonialism.[ clarification needed ] However, the interaction between the different nations and long distance trade which was made possible by the existence of trading diasporas was an important vanguard as it led to the development of global markets. In addition to the development of global markets trading diasporas also triggered an exchange of cultures, ideas and technology between the host country and the merchant.
SephardicJews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely 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 majority of Sephardim live in Israel.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
Cochin Jews are the oldest group of Jews in India, with roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon. The Cochin Jews settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India, now part of the present-day state of Kerala. As early as the 12th century, mention is made of the Jews in southern India by Benjamin of Tudela.
The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in the Indian subcontinent in recorded history. Desi Jews are a small religious minority who have lived in the region since ancient times. They were able to survive for centuries despite persecution by Portuguese colonizers and nonnative antisemitic inquisitions.
The Goa Inquisition was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in Portuguese India. Its objective was to enforce Catholic orthodoxy and allegiance to the Apostolic See of the Pontifex. Many peaceful conversions took place through the Goan Inquisition however the persecution of Hindus and the destruction of Hindu temples were still present.
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.
The naval Battle of Swally, also known as Battle of Suvali, took place on 29–30 November 1612 off the coast of Suvali a village near the Surat city and was a victory for four English East India Company galleons over four Portuguese galleons and 26 barks.
Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews are historic terms for the former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
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.
Jan Huygen van Linschoten was a Dutch spy, merchant, traveller and writer.
Indian maritime history begins during the 3rd millennium BCE when inhabitants of the Indus Valley initiated maritime trading contact with Mesopotamia. India's long coastline, which occurred due to the protrusion of India's Deccan Plateau, helped it to make new trade relations with the Europeans, especially the Greeks, and the length of its coastline on the Indian Ocean is partly a reason why it's known as that.
The Dutch–Portuguese War was a global armed conflict involving Dutch forces, in the form of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch West India Company, and their allies, against the Iberian Union, and after 1640, the Portuguese Empire. Beginning in 1598, the conflict primarily involved the Dutch companies and fleet invading Portuguese colonies in the Americas, Africa, and the East Indies. The war can be thought of as an extension of the Eighty Years' War being fought in Europe at the time between Spain and the Netherlands, as Portugal was in a dynastic union with Spain after the War of the Portuguese Succession, for most of the conflict. However, the conflict had little to do with the war in Europe and served mainly as a way for the Dutch to gain an overseas empire and control trade at the cost of the Portuguese.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom and some of them also Arabic.
Jewish copper plates of Cochin, also known as Cochin plates of Bhaskara Ravi-varman, is a royal charter issued by the Chera Perumal king of Kerala, south India to Joseph Rabban, a Jewish merchant magnate of Kodungallur. The charter shows the status and importance of the Jewish colony in Kodungallur (Cranganore) near Cochin on the Malabar Coast.
The history of the Jews in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, in India, began in the late eighteenth century when adventurous Baghdadi Jewish merchants originally from Aleppo and Baghdad chose to establish themselves permanently in the emerging capital of the British Raj. The community they founded became the hub of the Judeo-Arabic-speaking Baghdadi Jewish trading diaspora in Asia.
Emanuel Raphael Belilios, was a banker, opium dealer, philanthropist and businessman, born in Calcutta, British India and active in Hong Kong. His father, Raphael Emanuel Belilios, was a member of a Jewish Venetian family. Belilios married Simha Ezra in 1855, and in 1862 he settled in Hong Kong and engaged in trade. His success saw him described in the British press at the time as "one of the merchant princes of the colony."
The history of the Jews in Colombia begins in the Spanish colonial period with the arrival of the first Jews during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th centuries in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who emigrated normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but some of them emigrated to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, because only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the arrival of the Sephardic ancestors of Latin American populations coincided with the initial colonization of Latin America, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contribute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrants would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
Market of Goa is Plate 5 in Jan Huyghen van Linschoten's Itinerario. The plate depicts the market in Goa, a region on the southwestern coast of India that was the center of maritime trade in Portuguese Asia. Itinerario is a book that includes detailed descriptions and thirty-six engravings of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten's observations of Goa and other Asian cities and islands.
Isaac Sardo Abendana was a Dutch Jewish jeweller and diamond merchant of Madras, India. Originally from Holland, Abendana moved to India in 1702. Due to his skill in the trade, Abendana was widely consulted, including by most Madras trading companies and by his close friend, Thomas Pitt, the governor of Fort St. George.
