Asia is the smallest region on this site and the least documented, but it is not an afterthought. The Portuguese and Spanish empires reached India, China and the Philippines in the sixteenth century, and New Christian merchants went with them.
So did the Inquisition. The tribunal at Goa was one of the most active anywhere, and its business was largely the prosecution of New Christians.
Three communities are covered here.
Why Asia matters more than the numbers suggest
These were never large populations. What makes them significant is that they sit at the far end of trade routes that begin in Lisbon, Amsterdam and Livorno, and the same families appear at both ends.
The coral and diamond trade is the clearest case. Coral was fished in the Mediterranean, worked at Livorno, shipped to India and exchanged for diamonds, which came back to Amsterdam and London to be cut. Sephardi firms controlled long stretches of that chain. A merchant recorded at Madras may have a brother in Livorno and a correspondent in London.
Anyone researching an Asian connection should therefore expect the surrounding records to be European.
The alias problem is at its worst here
Western Sephardi merchants commonly used two names, a commercial name and a synagogue name. In Asia this is particularly acute, because the commercial records are Portuguese, English or Dutch, and the community records are Hebrew.
Jaques de Paiva, the first Jew of Madras, was Moses Zagache. Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva, who wrote the 1686 account of the Jews of Cochin, was Pedro Pereyra of Surat.
A researcher who knows only one of the two names will conclude the person does not appear in the other archive. Our page on Sephardic surnames sets this out in more detail.
The three communities
India — three separate Jewish populations, which should not be confused. The Cochin Jews, present for many centuries, among whom the Paradesi or foreign Jews included Sephardi arrivals after 1492. The Bene Israel of the Konkan coast, who are not Sephardi. And the Baghdadi merchants of Calcutta and Bombay, who arrived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Separately, Portuguese New Christians appear throughout the Goa Inquisition records, and Madras had a small Sephardi merchant community with an English connection.
Macau — the Portuguese settlement on the China coast, where New Christian merchants operated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which fell within the Goa tribunal’s jurisdiction.
The Philippines — Manila and the galleon trade to Acapulco. New Christians were present from the late sixteenth century, and because the Philippines were governed from Mexico, they were prosecuted by the Mexican Inquisition rather than a local one. The files are in Mexico City and Madrid.
Where are the records?
Almost entirely in Europe and Latin America rather than in Asia.
The Goa Inquisition archive has been destroyed, which is a serious loss. What survives of its work is in Lisbon, in summaries, correspondence and appeals sent back to the Portuguese tribunal.
For India and Macau, the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon holds the colonial administration. For the Philippines, the Mexican Inquisition records at the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, and the Archivo General de Indias in Seville.
For the English connection at Madras, the India Office Records at the British Library.
Local Jewish community records survive only at Cochin, and partly at Calcutta and Bombay for the Baghdadi communities.
What has not been done
Almost everything. No systematic search of the Goa material for Jewish family history has been undertaken. The Madras Sephardi merchants have never been traced back to Livorno and London family by family, though the connection is well established. And the Philippines New Christians are known almost entirely from a handful of Inquisition cases.
This is a region where a determined researcher could make a real contribution.
Help us find records
We would particularly welcome anything on the Madras community, on New Christians in Macau, and on any surviving material from the Goa tribunal. Please email [email protected].
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