The Forgotten Diaspora
Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World

This book traces the history of early seventeenth-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petit Côte.

Peter Mark (Author), José da Silva Horta (Author)

9781107667464, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 July 2013

280 pages, 8 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.43 kg

'… meticulously researched … this path-breaking book has persuasively demonstrated the importance of West African Jews for understanding the early modern Atlantic world.' Daniel J. Schroeter, Journal of African History

This book traces the history of early seventeenth-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petite Côte. There, they lived as public Jews, under the spiritual guidance of a rabbi sent by the newly established Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam and were protected from agents of the Inquisition by local Muslim rulers. The Petite Côte communities included several Jews of mixed Portuguese-African heritage as well as African wives, offspring, and servants. The blade weapons trade was an important part of their commercial activities. These merchants participated marginally in the slave trade but fully in the arms trade, illegally supplying West African markets with swords. This arms trade depended on artisans and merchants based in Morocco, Lisbon, and northern Europe and affected warfare in the Sahel and along the Upper Guinea Coast. The study discovers previously unknown Jewish communities and by doing so offers a reinterpretation of the dynamics and processes of identity construction throughout the Atlantic world.

Introduction
1. Two Sephardic communities on Senegal's Petite Côte
2. Jewish identity in Senegambia
3. Religious interaction: Catholics, Jews, and Muslims in early 17th-century Upper Guinea
4. The blade weapons trade in seventeenth-century West Africa
5. The Luso-African ivories as historical source for the weapons trade and for the Jewish presence in Guinea of Cape Verde
6. The later years: merchant mobility and the evolution of identity
Conclusion
Appendix I
Appendix II.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], African history [HBJH], European history [HBJD]