The Untold History of Jewish Pirates and the African Slave Trade

In 1492, Spain gave its Jews four months to be baptized or get out. This is the history of the Jewish pirates who struck back at the Spanish Empire. It follows Moses Cohen Henriques, whose family fled the Spanish Inquisition. He spied on Spain, helped the Dutch capture the entire Spanish treasure fleet in 1628, guided the invasion of Brazil, and became a slave trader at the auctions of Recife. This documentary covers the history of pirates, the history of the Caribbean, the history of the Americas and the history of the Atlantic slave trade, from the expulsion of 1492 to Dutch Brazil, Henry Morgan and the earthquake that sank Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1692. SOURCES Eyewitnesses and documents from the time - The Edict of Expulsion, 31 March 1492 (English translation by Edward Peters) - Lucas de Tuy, Chronicon Mundi (c. 1236) - Samuel Usque, Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (1553) - Juan de Benavides, report to the King of Spain on the loss of the treasure fleet (1628) - Spanish memorial on damage done by the Jews of Holland (1634), published by Cyrus Adler, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 17 (1909) - Manoel Calado, O Valeroso Lucideno (1648) - Zacharias Wagener, Thierbuch (c. 1641), painting and notes on the Recife slave market - Minute book of the Zur Israel congregation of Recife (1648) - Johan Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels into Brasil (1682) - Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (1705) - Letters of Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch West India Company (1654–1655) - Alexandre Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America (1678) - Rev. Emmanuel Heath, A Full Account of the Late Dreadful Earthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica (London, 1692) Books and articles - Edward Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean (Doubleday, 2008) - Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (Columbia University Press, 1960) - C. R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 (Oxford, 1957) - Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment (Cornell University Press, 2016) - Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic (Oxford, 1995) - Hermann Wätjen, Das holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien (1921) - Seymour Drescher, "Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade" (2001) - Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade (NYU Press, 1998) - Victor Tiribás, research on the Cohen Henriques family - Natalie Zemon Davis, "Regaining Jerusalem" (Tablet) - Harrie Teunissen, "From Mauritsstad to New Amsterdam" (2012) - Leo Hershkowitz, "By Chance or Choice: Jews in New Amsterdam 1654," American Jewish Archives 57 (2005) - Michael Pawson and David Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, 1975) - Matthew Mulcahy, "The Port Royal Earthquake," Early American Studies 6 (2008) - Ross Kenneth Urken, "The Forgotten Jewish Pirates of Jamaica," Smithsonian (2016) - Philip K. Allan, "The Battle of Matanzas Bay" (2022) - The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), "Jamaica" - SlaveVoyages.org, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database