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Ed Kritzler

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Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean Kindle Edition

by Edward Kritzler (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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At the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition forced many Jews to flee the country. The most adventurous among them took to the high seas as freewheeling outlaws. In ships bearing names such as Prophet Samuel, Queen Esther, and Shield of Abraham, they attacked and plundered the Spanish fleet while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living in hiding. Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean is the entertaining saga of a hidden chapter in Jewish history, and of the cruelty, terror and greed that flourished during the Age of Discovery. Among the many daring figures to feature in the book are: ‘the Great Jewish Pirate’ Sinan, Barbarossa’s second-in-command; Rabbi Samuel Palache and his brother, Joseph, who went from commanding pirate ships to founding the first openly Jewish community in the New World; and Abraham Cohen Henriques, and arms dealer who used his cunning and economic muscle to find safe havens for other Jews. Filled with high-seas adventures including encounters with Captain Morgan and other legendary pirates – and detailed portraits of cities stacked high with plunder, such as Port Royal, Jamaica, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean captures a gritty and glorious era of history from an unusual and eye opening perspective.

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April 4, 2014
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Historian and journalist Kritzler brings the political and religious ramifications of Caribbean pirating into a whole new context while explaining how the Jewish diaspora funded piracy to advance their religious (and financial) freedom in the New World. Through a deft combination of factual overview and anecdotes involving some of the more colorful figures of the time, Kritzler paints a unique picture of this perhaps over-exposed period of history. For centuries in Europe, Jews were shunted from country to country, exploited by penurious rulers for their financial acumen and promptly persecuted after the country became solvent (most egregiously in Spain). By financing piracy, the Jews ensured their own survival, as well as monopolizing the most lucrative income sources Europe had seen in centuries. While figures like Henry Morgan and Barbarossa will leap out at readers familiar with pirate lore, the little-known "pirate rabbi" Samuel Palache will excite just as much interest. Though Kritzler tends to leap from topic to topic, he covers an impressive interdisciplinary range-combining politics, economics and religion-that should satisfy fans of religious history and swashbuckling true stories.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One
COLUMBUS AND JAMAICA'S
CHOSEN PEOPLE

May 1504, Santa Gloria, Jamaica: For nearly a year, Columbus had been stranded in Jamaica with a hoard of gold, a mutinous crew, and a few dozen teenage loyalists, some of whom were secret Jews. Alone, melancholy, and confined to his cabin by gout, the great explorer wrote his patron Queen Isabella a despairing letter. He feared that even if he defeated the mutineers, the governor of Santo Domingo, who had promised to send a rescue ship, wanted him dead.

So much had happened since he had been making the rounds of Europe, a would-be explorer going from king to king seeking royal backing for a promised quick passage west across the Ocean Sea to India and the wealth of the East. In 1486, at his first meeting with Spain's royal couple, King Ferdinand, although intrigued by the plan, told Columbus the time was not opportune. They were in the midst of a war and could not seriously consider such an important matter until peace was restored. In parting, Queen Isabella counseled patience and awarded Columbus a retainer, promising they would meet again when the war was over.

On January 12, 1492, Columbus entered the royal quarters. He had been summoned a few days after Spain's final victory over the Moors at Granada, and the queen had sent him money to buy new clothes and a mule to ride. Encouraged by her gift, Columbus was confident. He had honed his proposal into a detailed presentation, with maps and charts from the Jewish astronomer Abraham Zacuto, and quotes from the Bible and Greek sages supporting his view that the world was round, the oceans not large, and Japan lay three thousand miles to the west, across the Ocean Sea. Prepared for questions, he received none.

After an unsettling silence, Ferdinand spoke. Victory over the Moors had emptied the treasury, he said. Moreover, he could not abide Columbus's demand for hereditary rule over lands he might discover. The queen, his admirer, said nothing. The meeting broke up and Columbus left, angry and disgusted. All this time he had waited for the war to end. Now that it had, Ferdinand was pleading poverty. Pausing briefly in the corridor, he informed the king's treasurer that he was leaving for France where Bartholomew, his younger brother, was arranging an audience with the king. If that monarch wasn't interested, he would cross the channel to meet with the English king. He would not be denied his dream, one that, as Cervantes wrote of Don Quixote, "He hugged and would not part with even if barefoot friars had begged him."

Before Columbus rode past the gates of Santa Fe, the royal treasurer, Luis de Santangel, sought and was granted an audience with Queen Isabella. The royal chronicler noted, "[Santangel] appeared distressed as if a great misfortune had befallen him personally." He had good reason: Santangel was a secret Jew, and as a member of the royal court, he was aware his people were about to be expelled from Spain. There were upward of a half million Jews in the country they had called home since the time of Christ. Where would they go? India? China? Perhaps the explorer Columbus would discover a new land somewhere. Santangel and other secret Jews in the royal service hoped Columbus's voyage would provide an answer.

The Inquisition mandated that Jews, under penalty of death, must either leave or convert to Catholicism. Santangel, like many others, had converted and became a New Christian. If discovered Judaizing, the converts were liable to be burned at the stake. The Santangel family, long established in Spain, was among the first targets of the Inquisition. Luis's cousins had gone up in flames in Saragossa, and only the intervention of Ferdinand had prevented Luis from suffering the same fate.

Santangel addressed the queen. He was astonished, he told her, "to see Her Highness who has always shown such resolute spirit in matters of great consequence, should lack it now for an enterprise of so little risk for so vast a gain." He spoke to the queen of the wealth to be acquired, and the great service she would render to God, "all for the price of a few caravels [ships]." Alluding to Columbus's plan to seek royal backing elsewhere, he cautioned Isabella, "It would be a great damage to Her Crown and a grave reproach to Her Highness if any other prince should undertake what Columbus offered Her Highness." If money was a consideration, Santangel said, he would be glad to finance the fleet himself.

A mounted messenger caught up with Columbus as he was crossing the Bridge of the Pines, seven miles from Santa Fe, and bade him return. Later that day, with all parties again gathered in the royal quarters, the king informed Columbus that the Crown would sponsor his Enterprise of the Indies, and meet his demands. No mention was made of hereditary title. Two months later, it was still a stumbling block in his negotiations when an event occurred that made its inclusion mandatory.

On the morning of March 31, 1492, Columbus was in his room in Santa Fe overlooking the main square when the sound of trumpets brought him to his balcony. Below, the town crier, flanked by mounted guards, read the expulsion order of the Inquisition: Jews had four months to leave. After that, any "caught in Our domains will be punished without trial by death, and seizure of property."

The Jews of Spain had been threatened with expulsion before. Rulers since the Visigoths had used this threat to extract more money from them. A period joke compared the Jews to a "money box" that you break open when you need money. But this time it was different: The Church was involved.
To the Jews of the royal court who supported Columbus, the expulsion order made it essential that Columbus hold out for hereditary rule. If no Asian kingdom welcomed Jewish refugees, Columbus, as the ruler of a new land, would be able to provide a haven for Spanish Jews.

It is thought that Columbus himself was a descendant of Spanish Jews, the Colon family, who had converted and moved to Genoa a century before on the heels of the Massacre of 1391. Some even contend he was a Cabalist. Whatever his genealogy, he was in sympathy with the People of the Book, and they with him. In his early years, in Portugal and Spain, he lived in a largely Jewish and New Christian world of navigators, cartographers, astronomers, and mathematicians. While others looked askance at this wandering sailor and laughed at his dream, Iberian Jews and conversos assisted Columbus in developing his Enterprise of the Indies. In their learned circles, they dealt with a round world. Church geography did not apply to them.

On April 17, Columbus agreed to the Capitulations of Santa Fe, which limited his rights to lifetime rule. Two weeks later, this ruling was reversed, and Columbus was granted hereditary rule. No account exists of the final negotiations, but it is likely that court Jews, facing the forced exile of their people, counseled Columbus to hold firm to his demand. One imagines a scene in the royal chambers with Santangel persuading the royals that the explorer's demand should not trouble them. If his voyage were successful, Columbus and his crew of ninety men could not possibly subdue one of the powerful Asian nations. On the other hand, if he took possession of a few islands along the way, the Crown would benefit by having way stations for Spain's trading ships plying the shortcut passage to the wealth of the East.

Whether or not such a scene took place, Ferdinand finally relented: Columbus would sail with his right to rule any new lands he discovered, to be "enjoyed forever by his heirs and successors."

After Columbus returned from his successful first voyage, he made three more trips across the Western Sea. He never reached Asia, and didn't live long enough to fulfill his pledge to Santangel and the court Jews to provide a homeland for converted Jews. But it would be kept by his family in the "new land" the Crown did bequeath to Columbus's descendants, the island of Jamaica. How this came about goes back to a promise he made to the teenage conversos who stood by him when he was marooned there.

Returning from his fourth voyage to the New World, Columbus had been forced to beach his ships in Jamaica after sailing from Panama with a cache of gold objects bartered from the Indians. His two ships were leaking badly. Columbus hoped to reach Santo Domingo to obtain others to return to Spain. But his worm-eaten caravels, described by his son as "more full of holes than a bees' honeycomb," barely made Jamaica. With water rising in their holds, he ran them aground and lashed them together in a shallow, becalmed bay on the island's north coast, "a cross bow's shot from land." Atop his foredeck he fashioned a palm thatch hut to serve as his cabin.

In his first letter to the queen, written soon after he arrived, he bragged that he had discovered the source of Solomon's gold in the mines of Panama, and claimed to have seen more gold in a few days there than in all his previous trips. His fourteen-year-old son Fernando, brought along as cabin boy, later recorded that his father had traded small bells and mirrors for sixty-three gold pendants and other gold objects with the Veragua Indians of Panama.

This was his second trip to Jamaica. When he had discovered the island in 1494, he had named the half-moon bay where he was now stranded Santa Gloria for "the beauty of its glorious landscape." After a year, he thought he might never leave. Was this where his life was to end? Uncertain of his future, he wrote his queen:

We have been confined 10 months, lodged on the decks of our ships. My men have mutinied. My brother, my son, and those that are faithful are sick, starving and dying. Governor Ovando of Santo Domingo has sent to see if I am dead rather than to carry me back alive. I conclude Your officers intend my life should terminate here.

The object of his cynicism was the arrival the previous week of a ship from Ovando. It had anchored outside the reef in the late afternoon, and left before dawn. Before sailing away, its captain ferried over a side of ham, a barrel of wine, and a message from the governor that a rescue ship would soon be sent.

The governor's message did confirm the safe arrival of Columbus's first mate, Diego Mendez, who ten months before had set forth in a dugout canoe to carry news of their plight to Santo Domingo. But, as he wrote the queen, he really believed the ship had been sent "to spy on how I might be totally destroyed."

Made furious by his suspicions, Columbus concluded his letter with an angry vow. Should he die in Jamaica, and his proprietary rights be withdrawn, "ingratitude will bring down the wrath of Heaven, so that the wealth that I have discovered shall be the means of stirring up all mankind to revenge, and the Spanish nation shall suffer hereafter."

Fortunately for Columbus, Isabella never received his threat. Having no way to send this letter, Columbus could only call on "the good angels that succor the oppressed and innocent to bring this paper to my great mistress." Apparently no Heavenly couriers were listening as this little known letter never left the island. His earlier letter, carried by Mendez, had been forwarded to her from Santo Domingo.

The mutiny referred to in his despairing missive had broken out five months earlier, when Francisco Poras, captain of one of the ships, burst in on the admiral in his straw cabin and demanded they leave at once. He and his brother Diego, the fleet's notary, accused Columbus of having deliberately marooned them in Jamaica knowing he was unwelcome in Santo Domingo. The Poras brothers' insurrection was joined by most of the older seamen, who after six months in Santa Gloria wanted out. Columbus declared he would not leave, but rather than battle the mutineers, agreed to let them go.

Crying, "I am for Castile--follow me," the rebel leader seized the dozen canoes Columbus had bartered from the Indians. Forcing the natives to row, the rebels made three attempts to overcome the fierce currents of the 108-mile-wide channel to Hispaniola. On their final try, they gave up, though only after throwing eighteen Indian paddlers overboard, and chopping off the hands of those who clung to the side. Five months later, after a two-week march across the island, marked by rape and pillage, they were encamped in an Indian village a half mile from Santa Gloria, intending to seize the admiral's ships.

Columbus had just finished his troubled letter to the queen when the two men he had sent to parlay with the rebels returned. They had taken an offer of pardon and a promise that they would soon be rescued. But Poras rebuffed them.

When his emissaries reported that Poras's men were preparing for battle, Columbus withdrew to his cabin in despair. But Bartholomew, his fierce younger brother, convinced him to take the fight to the enemy. He armed the fifty young loyalists and set forth to attack the rebel camp. When the mutineers saw Columbus's teenage army approach they laughed. There was no way mere youths, "brought up in a softer mode of life," could defeat such "hardy sailors, rendered robust and vigorous by the roving life." But the rebels' confidence was premature: In a superhuman effort, Bartholomew slew the six mutineers sent to attack him, and had the point of his sword at Poras's breast when the rest surrendered. The Poras brothers were put in irons aboard ship, and the forty-eight rebels were disarmed and kept on shore. With peace restored, a reunited, mistrustful crew nervously awaited their promised rescue.

Even if Ovando did send a ship, Columbus had little faith his gold medallions would be safe in Hispaniola, whose previous governor, he wrote the queen, "robbed me and my brother of our dearly purchased gold." He expected no less from Ovando. During the tense five weeks before two rescue ships arrived (one sent by Mendez, the other by Ovando), he rarely left his cabin. Never again did he set foot on Jamaica.

What happened to the gold of Veragua? The Crown had instructed Columbus that if treasure was found, "you must draw up an account of all this in the presence of Our Notary_._._._so that We may know everything that the said Islands and Mainland may contain." Yet the sixty-three medallions from Panama are not mentioned in the notary's account, nor are they listed in the inventory of the ship that brought him home to Spain. Unsure his gold would survive Ovando's rescue, Columbus would not have left the gold in Hispaniola. Columbus also had reason to fear a renewed mutiny on the way back to Spain. It is therefore unlikely that he kept the gold with him.

That leaves Jamaica. Since he never left the ship, and trusted no one but his son and brother and a core group of loyalists, he presumably asked members of this latter group to transfer his gold to safety.

From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Edward Kritzler is a historian and journalist residing in Kingston, Jamaica. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com What we have here is the obvious inspiration for Mel Brooks's next movie. Forget Capt. Jack Sparrow. How about Capt. Jacob Sparrowitz, swashbuckling around in a tricorn yarmulke, drinking, wenching and never paying retail? Alas, Edward Kritzler, a writer and tourism promoter in Jamaica, describes no such hi-jinks in this, his first book. Nor does he present much evidence of genuine piracy on the part of Jews in the Caribbean. What he gives us instead is an earnest but rather disjointed retelling of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and their flight to such refuges as Holland, Brazil and Jamaica, where they played a growing role in trade during the 16th and 17th centuries. True, some interesting Jewish seafarers crop up in this volume. Moses Cohen Henriques, a Dutch privateer, captured a Spanish silver fleet off Havana in 1628. Sinan "the Great Jewish Pirate" allied with the Barbary pirates in the mid-16th century. As a young man, Samuel Palache attacked Spanish ships and later, as a rabbi, helped found the Jewish community in Amsterdam. That was apparently enough evidence for Kritzler and his publisher to give the book its catchy title. They would have us believe that masses of Sephardic Jews took to the seas to wave a defiant cutlass at their persecutors. To make this stretch, the author blurs the lines between those accused by the Spanish Inquisition of being secret Jews (or "conversos") and those who actually were, between those who owned buccaneer ships and those who manned them, and between outlaw pirates and privateers who had legal backing from a sovereign state. Still, Kritzler usefully reminds us of the scholarly heritage that gave birth to Jewish astronomers and cartographers without whom Columbus (and wasn't he at least part Jewish? The debate goes on!) could not have sailed. Mel Brooks's Inquisition ("History of the World -- Part 1") may be more entertaining, but Kritzler should be commended for making us rethink a few historical assumptions. What's "Aarrgh!" in Yiddish, anyway?
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Perhaps this entertaining and surprising book is an example of ethnic-identity chest-thumping gone wild, but, yes, there really were Jewish pirates who ran amok, sort of, on the Spanish Main in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Most of them were Sephardic Jews whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain or Portugal, and revenge was certainly a motivation for some. Their natural allies were England and the Dutch Republic, and the major characters were less freewheeling buccaneers than paid privateers. This is a wide-ranging saga filled with attractive and repellant personalities, including a warrior rabbi, a shady arms dealer, and loathsome Spanish inquisitors. Pirates and their exploits lend themselves to over-the-top romantic fantasies. In fact, the naval warfare in the Caribbean was frequently brutal, with no “hint” of pirate honor. Kritzler captures the spirit of that violent, lawless epoch and combines it with an interesting ethnic perspective. --Jay Freeman --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

“Compelling. . . . An ambitious and expansive history of a mostly unexamined aspect of the Jewish expulsion from Spain and Portugal.” —Los Angeles Times

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of Manischewitz! . . . A giddy, breathless dash through the material. . . . Jewish pirates [are] more vividly present in our imagination than we might have suspected.” —Jewish Daily Forward

“Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean is populated by so many remarkable characters–Jewish and otherwise–that picking a favorite is taxing.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Kritzler should be commended for making us rethink a few historical assumptions. What's ‘Aarrgh!’ in Yiddish, anyway?” —Washington Post

“A book that turns one’s lifelong notions on their ear and makes one rethink history is a find indeed. . . . [A] surprising, yet convincing story. . . . Enormous fun.” —Santa Cruz Sentinel

“A far-reaching chronicle of an oft-forgotten chapter in Jewish history, it also encompasses the role of Sephardi Jews in the opening up of the New World.” —Jerusalem Report

“Fascinating. . . . [Kritzler] exposes a virtually unexplored world in Jewish history. . . . [Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean] is a book that should not just be read, but studied as well.” —San Diego Jewish World

“Kritzler is a storyteller and the story he tells is about the tangled and colorful Sephardi web that stretched from Fez to Amsterdam to Jamaica.” —Haaretz

“This is far more than a book about Jewish pirates. It is a book about early Jewish Settlement in the New world and it makes for fascinating reading. . . . Kritzler illuminates an all but unknown chapter in Jewish history in colorful, salty prose.” —History Book Club

“Revelatory. . . . [Kritzler] details the story of a small group of Jewish merchants and adventurers who pioneered in the Jamaican pirate trade, and helped to create an outpost of religious freedom at the same time. A wonderful story, never before told.” —Jack Davis, author of The Pirates Laffite

“Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean is a wonderfully informed book of maritime history. Edward Kritzler is a splendid guide on a voyage through a dark and fascinating era of Jewish history.” —Jay Neugeboren, author of 1940, The Stolen Jew

“Pirate rabbis? Warrior Jews? Sephardic seafarers escaping the fires of Inquisition in quest of gold and freedom in the New World? If, like mine, your knowledge of Europe’s fabled Age of Discovery hasn’t featured these colorful and, as Edward Kritzler’s diligent scholarship demonstrates, historically influential pioneers, then Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean presents a tale as essential as it is entertaining.” —Robert H. Patton, author of Patriot Pirates

“What a treasure! Ed Kritzler has literally dived the depth of the Caribbean to bring us a well documented book on a hitherto forgotten role of Jews and their involvement in a most unusual occupation in the New World: Piracy.” —Bernard Diederich, author of Trujillo

“Using a warm style, Kritzler helps us understand why the pirate era occurred and how the Jews fitted into Caribbean history at that time. He also brings insights to little-understood historical facts, such as what really happened to that famous boatload of Jewish refugees that sailed from Recife to New Amsterdam in 1654; why Jamaica became a haven for Jewish merchants and how this morphed into its development as a center of the pirate trade; as well as the origin of the boucaniers, later known as buccaneers.” –Andree Aelion Brooks, author of The Woman Who Defied Kings and Out of Spain

“Ed Kritzler’s book unlocks the long buried Jewish heritage of many famous pirates and their fascinating long forgotten empire building activities. This book is a must read for pirate lovers and history buffs alike.” —Gail Selinger, pirate historian and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pirates

“Everyone is entitled to her own opinions on the matter but no one has given the subject of Jewish pirates more love and attention than Ed Kritzler. He is the aficionado of Jewish Pirates! Gangway! All Aboard! Onto the gunwales! We're off! What wild adventure!” —Rachel Frankel, author of Remnant Stones --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BRTBNCP3
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Aurum (April 4, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 4, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3130 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0767919521

Best Sellers Rank: #294,007 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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Bradford

Hilarious, illuminating, ground breaking.

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2023

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and, perhaps, my favorite book of the past decade. As noted above, “Pirates” is a misnomer. And like the title, some points made in the book are overstated to grab attention, but Pirates highlights critical, overlooked aspects of Jewish, European and Mediterranean history during the centuries before and after the Expulsion from Spain.

Pirates provides a new prism for understanding early Jewish settlement in the New World and the active role of Jews in tilting the tables against those who most feverishly tormented and tortured them. The book lends itself to hyperbole and the writing style is not the clearest, but the book provides a solid foundation for further research and breathes life into the critical role Jews played in global finance and economics and the measures a People took to survive against terrible odds.

9 people found this helpful

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Phred

Badly mis-titled, but still a contribution to the history of the New World.

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2012

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If you are looking for a tale of kosher swashbuckling, this is not it. We do have a small number of named Jewish pirates, one a Rabbi, and a few Jewish senior lieutenants, but never do we see them fighting from the decks of ships, flourishing a cutlass or otherwise actively engaged in anything promised by the long title of this book. The history detailed here touches most of planet and not just the Caribbean. Every few pages the word "pirate" is inserted, almost as an afterthought, emphasizing the absence of an action filled history rather than documenting one.

So much for the bad news
Once you get over the misleading title, this is a solid piece of readable history.
What is documented here is a struggle between a cruel, inhumane religiously intolerant Spain and a people willing to engage in any kind of subterfuge, conspiracy and occasionally acts of piracy to survive.

Parts of this book are depressing. This is a history of lives destroyed and people tortured because they were not sufficiently Christian. Spain forced people to convert to Catholicism then a generation later refused to trust the converted. Not content to crush the conversos in Spain, the Spanish Inquisition followed them to every remote New World colony where the victim populations would seek refuge. These remote places were, not coincidentally, places that had been colonized, at least in part, by Jews also seeking safety from the Inquisitors as well as the Spanish government. The arrival of the black robed priestly torturers always meant suffering and flaming death. Hundreds and thousands would die and similar numbers forced into cruel poverty. The careful records of forced confessions would be maintained and used to cause more evil for anyone suspected, or merely not in with the "right" people.

With minor editing and a new title, this is the story of the extremes a threatened people will use to protect themselves from an extreme evil. Jewish populations and their allies in the converso community had everything to gain by working against their nominal home land. They could not expect justice or even the right to be left alone.

Edward Kritzer has written a good history and done so in a highly readable style. He is neither a heavy handed academic nor -despite the title- a sensationalist. He does not do a proper job of documenting the relative business success of Jewish/ Judaizes and their non-Jewish counter parts. Furthermore he tends to use the terms," Jews", "Judaizer" and "converso" and "Portugese" as interchangeable. This has the feel of conceding that the Inquisition was correct to suspect and attack these people. He rarely reminds his readers that Inquisition documents were the products of extreme torture and therefore never trustworthy.

These criticisms aside, this is a worthy read. The standard history of the European settlement of the Americas rarely delves into the business aspects of developing new colonies. As such there tends to be little about the role of the merchants colonists who made the colonies a paying investment for the parent countries. Kritzler makes it clear that Jewish money, Jewish business acumen and Jewish warriors were disproportionate among the actors who founded European America. Kritzler brings into this discussion records not used in earlier texts adding important original evidence to support his conclusions.

There is something of a happy ending as Jewish populations would find protection with the help of enlightened or at least self-interested individuals and governments. This protection would always come with caveats. It was never a charter for full civil rights. Usually it came from governments wanting to have the cash advantages of a business savvy population.

21 people found this helpful

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Chanalee

Great book.

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2023

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If you are a history buff you will love this book, especially if you are Jewish. Well written, well researched and not boring.
Sad but true look at early Jewish history in the Diaspora. It’s amazing any of us survived.
It’s an eye opener, how we Jews contributed to the colonization of the world and overcame great odds. It will make you proud.

3 people found this helpful

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EG

the best historical book of the period... real chocking realities...

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2016

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This is by far the most complete, true and interested book of that period of our times, with it I found out that Im a jews decendant serfardi... a most book for those interested in our history of new world decendents... and the truth of the worth and more inhumane people of our history, Hitler was a joke next to the catholic church, the catholic church raped, killed and stole, the life and properties of the indians, the blacks and the jews since 1400 and for 300 years kept their rampage.... and where are the monuments for their atrocities.... the spanish goverment and the church should return all of that damage to the indians, slaves and jews.... this should be a requiered history book at all high school students world wide. specially at catholic schools...

9 people found this helpful

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Shim

Interesting and enjoyable book

Reviewed in Canada on May 22, 2019

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If you’re interested in the Jewish history of the Caribbean and particularly if you’re curious about why some Jews in the 15th and 16th centuries engaged in piracy there this is an easy and enjoyable read!

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Ama

Reviewed in Spain on March 25, 2018

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Excelente, ilumina magistralmente un episodio de la historia de las Americas muy poco conocido. Y sobre todo de los sefardíes occidentales

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John Martin

Excellent — essentiel

Reviewed in France on May 23, 2017

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Fantastique livre, qui dévoile avec une précision d'historien comment, en pleine chasse aux sorcières de l'Inquisition, la conquête des Amériques était fondamentalement un projet des Juifs martyrisés d'Europe pour trouver une terre d'accueil.

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Y

not the best of writing styles though

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2016

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Very interesting and informative read, not the best of writing styles though.

Albert kerschbaum

a jewel

Reviewed in Germany on August 22, 2014

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I would never have thought that Gods own people played such a role in Cairibbean history! the book is a real eye- opener for any historian

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