070122 KU Global Studies (2013W)

Jewish history is one of the earliest global histories. Since ancient times, people of Jewish religion became victims of persecution and expulsion. As consequence of this policy, an expanded dispersion took place to Africa, Asia, Europe and not least to the America. Diaspora we call the status of people who have to live away from an established or ancestral homeland and have the desire for repatriation. Since the 2nd century AD, the development of Sephardic Culture on the Iberian Peninsula was the result of Jewish migration to Northern Africa and Western Europe. Sephardic Jewry reached its peak after the Arab invasion in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. From the beginning of the 14th century, Jews suffered their decline through the catholic (and Muslim) policy of discrimination against Jews until their expulsion from Castile and Aragon in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
The first Jews who came to the Americas were Sephardic migrants from the Netherlands and Hamburg. Since the 1590s, Jews arrived at the cities of Amsterdam, Middelburg and Rotterdam as New Christian (forced baptized Jews) fugitives from Portugal and Spain, where the persecution through the Catholic Inquisition worked. Many of them had profound experiences as long distance traders, sugar engineers, engineers, interlopers, and cultural brokers and regarded as pioneers of modern Atlantic economy. Sephardic Jews arrived at the new Dutch colonies in the Americas between 1630 and 1670. They supported the founding of Jewish communities in their colonies. Jewish communities were founded in English colonies like Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, New York, and Rhode Island, as well as the Danish Virgin island of St. Thomas. During the 18th century, some Ashkenazi Jews played a significant role as Court Jews called also court factors. They handled the finances of, or lent money to, European royalty and nobility and thus they established themselves in some of the most important Atlantic port cities. There they got in contact with Sephardic networks and used their commercial routes to the Americas, where they established their own communities. Jewish settlement started during the 19th century, when Spanish and Portuguese colonialism came to an end.