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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. 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. According to Steve Gosch of the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire divides the Assyrian traders into "stayers" and "movers." [3] Gosch further explains that "stayers" were the merchants who permanently settled on the Anatolian peninsula while "movers" traveled back and forth in order to sell their goods.
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 "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. Long distance trade at this time mainly "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 clearly 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.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
The Jewish diaspora or exile is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.
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 state of Kerala. As early as the 12th century, mention is made of the Jews in southern India by Benjamin of Tudela. They are known to have developed Judeo-Malayalam, a dialect of Malayalam language.
Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population. Although considered a self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.
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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 Rome (Pontifex). Conversions took place through the Goan Inquisition with the persecution of Hindus and the destruction of Hindu temples. The inquisition primarily focused on the New Christians accused of secretly practicing their former religions, and Old Christians accused of involvement in the Protestant Revolution of the 16th century. Also, among the offenders, were those suspected of committing sodomy, they were given the second most harsh punishments. The inquisition was established in 1560, briefly suppressed from 1774 to 1778, continued thereafter until it was finally abolished in 1812. Forced conversions led to crypto-Hinduism with those accused of it imprisoned and depending on the criminal charge, could even be sentenced to death if convicted. The Inquisitors also seized and burnt any books written in Sanskrit, Dutch, English, or Konkani, on the suspicions that they contained deviationist or Protestant material.
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.
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.
The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews. 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 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 Plteau 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 since 1515 ,and was known as the Eastern Ocean earlier. The ocean was called so, due to the advent of international trade by the Europeans which still continues to this day. As per Vedic records, Indian traders and merchants traded with the far east and Arabia. During the Maurya Empire, there was a definite "naval department" to supervise the ships and trade. At the end of 1st century BCE Indian products reached the Romans during the rule of Augustus, and the Roman historian Strabo mentions an increase in Roman trade with India following the Roman annexation of Egypt. As trade between India and the Greco-Roman world increased, spices became the main import from India to the Western world, bypassing silk and other commodities. Indians were present in Alexandria while Christian and Jewish settlers from Rome continued to live in India long after the fall of the Roman Empire, which resulted in Rome's loss of the Red Sea ports, previously used to secure trade with India by the Greco-Roman world since the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Indian commercial connection with Southeast Asia proved vital to the merchants of Arabia and Persia during the 7th–8th century. A study published in 2013 found that some 11 percent of Australian Aboriginal DNA is of Indian origin and suggests these immigrants arrived about 4,000 years ago, possibly at the same time dingoes first arrived in Australia.
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The term Gujarati Muslim is usually used to signify an Indian Muslim from the state of Gujarat in western coast of India. Most Gujarati Muslims have the Gujarati language as their mother tongue, but some communities have Urdu as their mother tongue. The majority of Gujarati Muslims are Sunni, with a minority of Shi'ite groups.
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.
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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 century 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 did emigrate normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also 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, as 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 Sephardic ancestry present in Latin American populations arrived at the same time as the initial colonization, 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.
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.
