Cape Verde, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau are one subject: one trading population, one base in the islands — and three different answers to whether a New Christian could live openly as a Jew. The Gambia is the fourth river in the same system. Read the four pages together.
This is the shortest page on this site, and it is worth explaining why before you read it.
On this page
- Why is this page so short?
- Was the Gambia part of the same trading world?
- What was the Courland episode?
- Why does 1661 change the archive?
- What we cannot say
- What records can you actually reach?
- Further reading
Why is this page so short?
Because no Jewish community has ever been identified on the Gambia, and nothing in the surviving literature suggests one existed.
The Gambia river was one of the great arteries of the Upper Guinea trade, and the New Christian traders described on our Cape Verde, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau pages worked it as they worked every other river on this coast. There were Luso-African settlements along it for two centuries. What there is here is a share in a regional story, and a change of archive after 1661 that is worth knowing about.
If you have a family question that touches this coast, start with the Senegal and Guinea-Bissau pages. This one exists so that the map is complete, and so that a researcher who looks for the Gambia finds an honest answer rather than silence.
Was the Gambia part of the same trading world?
Yes — entirely. It was simply another river in the same system.
Portuguese ships reached the Gambia in the 1450s, and the river became the principal route inland — further into the interior than any other on the coast, reaching towards the trading networks of the western Sudan.
The traders who worked it were the lançados: Portuguese and Luso-African merchants, a significant number of them New Christians, operating outside Portuguese jurisdiction, married into local societies, and based ultimately on Cape Verde. Their settlements on the river included Bintang, Geregia, Tankular, Kassan and Sika — small trading towns with Luso-African populations and, in some cases, churches.
Everything said on our Guinea-Bissau page about how this population lived, and about the limits of Portuguese authority, applies here.
What was the Courland episode?
An improbable Baltic colony, and a loose end we record rather than a finding.
Between 1651 and 1661 the Gambia belonged to the Duchy of Courland — a small Baltic state whose Duke, Jacob Kettler, pursued an ambitious and short-lived colonial policy. Courland held a fort on what is now Kunta Kinteh Island and, at the same period, a colony on Tobago.
That Tobago venture connects, faintly, to material elsewhere on this site: Samuel Oppenheim’s study of the Guiana settlements takes in the Zeeland and Courland activity on Tobago, and the same Amsterdam commercial world stood behind several of these ventures.
We are not aware of any Jewish involvement in Courland’s Gambia colony, and we would be interested to learn of any.
Why does 1661 change the archive?
Because the English took the fort that year, and the records move from Lisbon to London.
The Gambia remained in English and then British hands, through the Royal African Company and its successors, until independence in 1965. Anyone tracing a family or a trading house across that date needs to change countries as well as centuries. The Royal African Company records at The National Archives are substantial and name traders, factors and shipping.
What we cannot say
Three things, stated plainly, because the temptation on a page like this is to imply more than the evidence supports:
- We know of no organised Jewish presence on the Gambia at any period.
- We know of no Inquisition case specifically arising on the Gambia, though denunciations from this coast generally went to Lisbon and the material has not been systematically searched.
- The proportion of New Christians among the Gambia lançados is unknown, as it is everywhere on this coast. They were numerous in the trade as a whole; that is as far as the evidence goes.
If any of these turns out to be wrong, we would like to know, and this page will grow.
What records can you actually reach?
The Portuguese period, to 1661
- Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon — Inquisition material, through Digitarq. Search under Guiné and Cabo Verde rather than under the Gambia.
- Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon.
- Arquivo Nacional de Cabo Verde, Praia — because Cape Verde administered the whole coast.
The English and British period, from 1661
- The National Archives (UK) — the Royal African Company records in the T 70 series, which are substantial and name traders, factors and shipping; and the Colonial Office series for the Gambia.
- British Library — India Office and other commercial collections for the eighteenth-century companies.
Regional
- Amsterdam City Archives — the notarial archives, for Dutch trade on this coast.
- National Records Service of The Gambia, Banjul — colonial-period administration.
What has and hasn’t been researched
- Nobody has looked. That is the honest position. Toby Green and Mark and Horta cover the Gambia within their wider treatments of the Upper Guinea coast, but no one has asked the Jewish question of this river specifically.
- The Royal African Company records are indexed and unworked from this angle, and they cover the period from 1661 in detail.
- The Courland venture and its Tobago counterpart are curiosities that might repay a look, given the Amsterdam capital behind so much of this activity.
Further reading
Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 (Cambridge, 2012).
Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta, The Forgotten Diaspora (Cambridge, 2011).
Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800.
George E. Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa.
For the English period, the literature on the Royal African Company.
Organisations and repositories
Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo and Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon.
Arquivo Nacional de Cabo Verde, Praia.
The National Archives (UK) — Royal African Company, T 70.
National Records Service of The Gambia, Banjul.
Help us find records
This page is short because the evidence is short, and almost anything would lengthen it. We are looking for:
- Any Inquisition denunciation arising on the Gambia river
- Evidence of Jewish or New Christian traders at Bintang, Geregia, Tankular, Kassan or Sika
- Anything on Jewish involvement in the Courland colony, 1651–61
- Royal African Company records naming Jewish traders or factors
If you hold any of this, or know where it is, please email [email protected]. Material contributed is credited, and we are happy to work under any conditions you set.
Research services
We would not take on a Gambia commission as such. If you have a family in this trading world, the work is in Lisbon and on our Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde pages, and after 1661 in the Royal African Company records in London. We will tell you honestly whether there is anything to find. If you would like help, including for a Portuguese or Spanish nationality application, you can hire a professional Sephardic genealogist.
If you have found this page useful, please consider making a small donation to support this site.
See also
Senegal · Guinea-Bissau · Cape Verde — most readers arriving here should leave for one of these. Also Portugal, and the Guianas for the Courland and Tobago thread.