Sephardic Jews in Ghana and West Africa
The Groot Desseyn (“Grand Design”) was the Dutch plan to seize Portugal’s African and American colonies.
The Dutch started trading on the Gold Coast (today in Ghana) in 1598. The Portuguese, who had been in the area since the 15th Century, claimed this territory as their own. Conflict resulted. The Dutch built Fort Nassau (pictured) near Mouri in 1612, and captured Elmina (1637). Fort San Sebastian (1640) and Fort Santo Antonio (1642) from the Portuguese.
What, if any, was the Jewish or New Christian role in all this? I don’t know. It is worth observing that the Jews and New Christians were not a single entity. It is possible that those Jews who had been early settlers in Amsterdam were unrelated to – and unknown to – those New Christians who were settled and trading in the Portuguese empire.
Jonathan Israel, the expert on Dutch trade during the Golden Age, says that the Jewish involvement in the slave trade was negligible, although there was Jewish involvement in the distribution of slaves in the New World. He identifies just Diogo Nunes Belmonte (Ya’akov Israel Belmonte) as a slave trader. Herbert Bloom tends to assume that names of unclear origin are Jewish, suggesting a larger Jewish involvement. The Dutch “interloper” slave trade is estimated to have transported 14,000 people, out of a Dutch total of almost 300,000 people transported.
In the early 17th Century there were two Sephardi communities on the Petite Côte, today in Senegal in West Africa. This community has been researched by Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta (in The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World), and Tobias Green.
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