Were there Sephardim in Spain and Portugal?
‘Sephardic’ is a diaspora identity. That is to say, there were no Sephardic Jews before 1492. The experience of the Expulsion from Spain in 1492 and the forced conversions in Portugal created a new identity based on shared experience.
Main themes of Sephardic History in Europe
There were two Sephardic sub-groups in early modern Europe:
(a) The Portuguese or Western Sephardic diaspora who were descended from Jews forcibly converted to New Christians in Portugal but who later formed a Jewish diaspora.
(b) The Ladino-speaking Eastern Sephardim living in the Ottoman Empire’s Balkan provinces
Western Sephardim in Europe
The Western Sephardim are one of the most consequential small communities in world history, including for their role in creating a global economy and the European Enlightenment.
As a merchant class, we can see almost see European history unfolding in the migrations of the Western Sephardim. Initially trading with the Spanish and Portuguese empires, then expanding the trade to the empires’ rivals, and then working with the empires created by the rivals.
A classic example is the diamond processing industry. Diamonds were imported from India in exchange for red coral from Tunis sold by Portuguese Jews from Livorno. Initially the diamonds were processed in Spanish-ruled Antwerp, the independent Amsterdam, then London.
Sephardic genealogy focuses on the Amsterdam and London communities, but we should not ignore others, notably Bordeaux, Bayonne, Hamburg and Livorno.
Eastern Sephardim in Europe
Sephardic Jews reached the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s, presumably travelling via Italy or North Africa.
Genetics may re-write this history. The community that ended up speaking Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) had roots not just in Spain, but Italy, Portugal and possibly assimilated local Romaniote (Greek-speaking) Jews. The percentage of Spanish ancestry in this population may be less than we expect.
As far as I know, the migrations to and within the Ottoman Empire are not well studied. It had been suggested that in the early years there were larger populations along the Adriatic coast, but changing trade policies in the Ottoman Empire led to migrations to major cities, notably Thessaloniki (Salonika) and Constantinople (Istanbul).
As the Ottoman Empire expanded north in the Balkans, Sephardic Jews followed in its wake. Some of these Sephardic Jews later found themselves on the other side of the border as the Catholic Hapsburgs pushed south. Some of these Sephardim ended up in Amsterdam as ‘Belogrados’. Venice also seems to have been a transit point between Eastern and Western Sephardim.
Ottoman decline and European nationalism, including new nation states in the Balkans, spurred Eastern Sephardic migration from the Balkans. Much of the remaining community was murdered in the Holocaust, with most survivors emigrating then or after the fall of communism.
