The diaspora of Portuguese Jews and New Christians, known as Gente da Nação (People of the Nation), is considered the largest European diaspora of the early modern period. Portuguese Jews not only founded the first congregations and synagogues in Brazil (Recife and Olinda), but when they left Brazil they played an imperative role in establishing the first Jewish communities in Suriname, throughout the Caribbean, and in North America.
Portuguese Jews and New Christians and their descendants were deeply involved in the colonial enterprise in Brazil. They were among the New World’s first sugarcane-industry experts, skilled laborers, merchants, rabbis, calligraphists, playwrights, poets, writers, pharmacists, medical doctors, real estate brokers, and geographers—a fact that remains largely unknown in most public and academic spheres.
Drawing on nearly twenty thousand digitized dossiers of the Portuguese Inquisition, this volume offers a comprehensive, critical overview informed by both relatively inaccessible secondary sources and a significant body of primary sources.
Tabla de materias
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One. The Portuguese New Christian Uniqueness in the New World
Chapter Two. The Portuguese Inquisition and the Impact of Portuguese Jews and New Christians
Chapter Three. The Portuguese World, and Portuguese-Jewish Diasporas
Chapter Four. Sugar and the First New Christians in Colonial Brazil
Chapter Five. The First Jewish Settlement in the Americas
Chapter Six. Results from the Examination of the Portuguese Inquisition Dossiers in Brazil
Conclusion
Afterword
Appendix
Glossary
References
Sobre el autor
Alan P. Marcus is a professor of geography and environmental planning at Towson University. He is the author of Confederate Exodus: Social and Environmental Forces in the Migration of U.S. Southerners to Brazil.