Jews and Port Cities, 1590-1990 Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism

by Cesarani, David; Romain, Gemma

• ISBN13: 9780853036821
• ISBN10: 0853036829
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-01
• Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell

Summary

With studies of Jewish communities in port cities ranging from sixteenth century Livorno to modern Singapore, this book develops and extends the concept of the port Jew using a blend of conceptual innovation and original research. The first section explores the world of the Sephardi Jews, revealing patterns of mobility and networks that intertwined commerce, community and kinship. Individual case histories based on Livorno, Amsterdam, Cura�������§ao, Charleston, Liverpool, and Bristol examine how Jewish identity was formed in the unique milieu of the cosmopolitan maritime trading centre, how the commercial ethos of the bustling port promoted tolerance, and how the experience of civic inclusion was both a boon and a threat to Jewish life and culture. Challenging research on Charleston and Liverpool shows how slavery cast a shadow over the Jewish population and created an environment of racialized identities in which Jews occupied an ambiguous and ambivalent position. The second section concentrates on the experience of Ashkenazi Jews in the modern era, when the port was less a commercial hub for exchange and more a location of production, transhipment, and transmigration. Jews went from being primarily settlers and traders to becoming commodities in the business of mass migration. A disturbing case study of Hamburg under the Nazis shows that a history of diversity was no guarantor of tolerance. Yet research on Glasgow, with its ethnic and religious fragmentation, shows how far Jews and non Jews in port cities could get along functionally and amicably. All these contributions explore the concepts of diaspora and identity, probe the links between commerce and inter-communal relations, and map the subtle, shifting contours of language, culture, and community in the unique mercantile environment in the world's greatest ports.

Table of Contents

Introduction
David Cesarani	1	(13)
PART 1: THE SEPHARDI DIASPORA
Wings on their feet...and wings on their head': Reflections on the Study of Port Jews
Lois C. Dubin	14	(17)
The Port Jews of Livorno and their Global Networks of Trade in the Early Modern Period
Francesca Trivellato	31	(18)
Port Jews in Copenhagen: The Sephardi Experience and its Influence on the Development of a Modern Jewish Community in Denmark
Thorsten Wagner	49	(12)
Networks and Communication in the Sephardi Diaspora: An Added Dimension to the Concept of Port Jews and Port Jewries
Evelyne Oliel-Grausz	61	(16)
Were Merchants More Tolerant? 'Godless Patrons of the Jews' and the Decline of the Sephardi Community in Late Seventeenth-Century Hamburg
Klaus Weber	77	(16)
Identity, Space and Intercultural Contact in the Urban Entrepôt: The Sephardic Bounding of Community in Early Modern Amsterdam and London
Adam Sutcliffe	93	(16)
Trading Globally, Speaking Locally: Curacao's Sephardim in the Making of a Caribbean Creole
Linda M. Rupert	109
PART 2: COSMOPOLITANISM AND ITS LIMITS
Ethnicity, Identity and 'Race': The Port Jews of Nineteenth Century Charleston
Gemma Romain	123	(18)
The Jews of Bristol and Liverpool, 1750-1850: Port Jewish Communities in the Shadow of Slavery
David Cesarani	141	(16)
The 'Jewish Nation' of Livorno: A Port Jewry on the Road to Emancipation
Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti	157	(14)
The Port Jews of Corfu and the 'Blood Libel' of 1891: A Tale of Many Centuries and of One Event
Sakis Gekas	171	(26)
The Port Jews of Libau, 1880-1914
Nicholas J. Evans	197	(18)
Jewish and Catholic Irish Relations: The Glasgow Waterfront c.1880-1914
William Kenefick	215	(20)
Testing Cosmopolitan Tolerance: Port Jews in Cape Town during the Late Victorian and Edwardian Years
Milton Shain, Richard Mendelsohn and Vivian Bickford-Smith	235	(12)
From Atlantic Hotel to Atlantic Park: Anglo-America, Port Jews and the Invisible Transmigrant
Tony Kushner	247	(14)
An Island of Humanity in a Sea of Barbarism? Hamburg Jewry during the Nazi Period, 1933-45
Rainer Liedtke	261	(10)
Singapore, Manila and Harbin as Reference Points for Asian 'Port Jewish' Identity
Jonathan Goldstein	271
Conclusion
Gemma Romain	291	(5)
Abstracts	296	(8)
Notes on Contributors	304	(4)
Index	308