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The Jews and Trade[33]

Curaçao's Sephardic Jewish merchants came from a well established community in the Netherlands, which already by the 1600s had a well deserved reputation for religious tolerance.[34] Although several individual Jews arrived in the early years of Dutch rule, it was only after the 1648 peace with Spain that organized groups of Jewish colonists settled on the island. The first contingent, numbering just twelve, arrived from Amsterdam in 1651; a larger group of about seventy arrived in 1659 and others followed thereafter. The early Jewish settlers first tried their hand at agriculture on free land they got from the WIC, but the poor soil and lack of slaves made it impossible for then to earn a living exclusively from farming, and they soon turned to commerce.

João De Yllan, the organizer of the 1651 group, was probably the first Jew to trade from Curaçao; by 1652 he was exporting horses and timber in exchange for European manufactured goods for local consumption. This trade was not highly successful, however, and he seems to have lost all his money on the island. By 1656 a few individual Jews on Curaçao were trading regularly with Jewish merchants in New Netherland (some of whom had also been among the settlers in Brazil), importing foodstuffs and dry goods for their local consumption. That same year a Jewish merchant in Barbados delivered a shipment of flour, bread, brandy, beer and dry goods, which was traded for "fourteen horses and a quantity of fine timber."[35] These early imports, however, were strictly for local consumption.

Curaçao's lack of discriminatory statutes made it a hospitable home for the Jews from the earliest days of Dutch rule. At a time when many European countries still restricted the commercial activities of Jews, they found a completely open economic atmosphere on Curaçao in which to develop their trade. The only legal limitations they faced was a ban on their participation in politics (lifted in 1825) and an initial WIC monopoly on the most lucrative aspects of local trade: salt, timber and slaves. The WIC encouraged the Jews' business dealings from Curaçao and, from the very beginning, entered into business relations with both local Jewish merchants and their representatives in Amsterdam. The WIC guaranteed the Jews full religious freedom and the right to purchase slaves directly from the slave deposits; it also supplied them with those items on which it held a monopoly: horses and other livestock, fine timber and slaves. Sometimes this favorable treatment provoked the ire of independent Dutch merchants.

The Jews, in turn, provided the local government with basic provisions needed to support the garrison and its slaves from their own trade. The WIC charged independent merchants duties on all items that were imported to or exported from the island; although these were usually quite reasonable they were raised substantially during wartime. As major traders, the Jews were also major taxpayers, keeping the local government afloat with their substantial contributions to its coffers.

Curaçao's Jewish merchants were closely bound together in a small, closeknit community. Most Jews met each other every Saturday morning at the synagogue; they shared a high code of ethics, religious beliefs and an entire culture. Although they often competed against each other in commerce and shipping, family ties were quite strong. The marriage between children from two prominent families often consolidated important business relationships. In times of economic difficulty, the community helped each other out individually and as a group. Funds from the synagogue were often put up to ransom a merchant who had been imprisoned by the Spanish or to pay off a major debt. These close ties served them well commercially. With the secure safety net provided by the community, they were more apt to take risks. Knowing that correligionists would bail them out if necessary they often sold goods on credit, for example to plantation owners on the Spanish American mainland, waiting for payment in goods when the harvests came in. This ability to sell on the promise of future payment, without risking possible bankruptcy, gave them a decided competitive edge over the Dutch merchants. Jews were also forbidden by religious law from charging each other interest on any loans.

There was also direct trade with Jews back home in Amsterdam and in other key world markets. "The strength of the Curaçaoan Jewish merchant lay in his having capable, dependable representatives in Amsterdam, in other European cities and elsewhere."[36] The Jews' blood relationships in so many vital international markets was key to their commercial success. Jewish merchants usually were business partners with sons, brothers, brothers-in-law or cousins around the world. According to WIC records, almost every high level Jewish merchant on the island regularly did business with at least one close relative in Amsterdam's closeknit Jewish community. As Jewish merchants established enclaves in other world ports, they expanded these ties. "Most Jews who traded with the Jews of Curaçao were related to one another so that Curaçao was virtually the commercial and religious center of a large family," note Isaac and Suzanne Emmanuel, who have written the most comprehensive history of the island's Jews. "With such excellent connections business was bound to thrive in Curaçao or wherever Jewish settlements existed."[37] These personal ties made it easier to get goods on credit or delay payments during difficult economic times.

Once they were well established on the island their intimate understanding of commerce and their excellent personal ties with merchants in key world cities soon led Curaçao's Jews to begin trading with the neglected hinterland of the Spanish empire, the northern coast of mainland South America. Shipping merchandise in their own boats helped Jewish merchants to further reduce their costs. Their knowledge of Spanish (the region's major commercial language), gave them a clear advantage, not just in the days when Spain controlled the mainland and most of the larger Caribbean islands, but also thereafter, when the South American mainland continued to be one of Curaçao's most important markets.

The establishment of the first Jewish colonies on Curaçao coincided closely with the declaration of the British Navigation Act, which prohibited foreigners from trading with British colonies, just as the Spanish had prohibited any commercial intercourse with any of their possessions. As a result, the lucrative trade which many Dutch merchants had conducted from Amsterdam with British America was no longer possible. Curaçao's Jews, with family members and business contacts in both Amsterdam and British America, stepped in, filling an important role as intermediaries and getting a solid foothold in the process.

Jews imported manufactured goods, foodstuffs, books, building materials, boat supplies, hardware, cloth and arms from Europe. Some of these imports were used for local consumption; the surplus was sent to contacts on other Caribbean islands and on the South American mainland, in exchange for tobacco, citrus, indigo, ginger, vanilla, cochineal, hides, cotton, coffee, sugar, scrap metal, silver, gold powder and cacao. Jewish ships called at ports throughout the Caribbean and along the South American mainland, as well as Mexico; Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; Newport and Providence, Rhode Island; New York; and Charleston, South Carolina, among others. Curaçaoan traders settled in many of the regional ports and served as vital contacts for the ships. Jewish ships served as a kind of 'floating store' in the region, which was often highly risky; attacks by pirates and privateers were common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Even after they turned to international commerce, Curaçao's Jews continued to be plantation owners. By the early eighteenth century they owned over twenty-five plantations around the island, producing small amounts of indigo, citrus, melons, eggplant, and okra; the WIC charged a 10% tax on all produce that was exported. Attempts to cultivate cash crops such as cotton and tobacco were largely unsuccessful. Livestock breeding and trading remained a WIC monopoly. At the height of the privateering attacks in the eighteenth century, many merchants had to sell their plantations or houses to honor their debts or to reinvest the money in cargoes and ships. As a result, real estate values in town plummeted. By the end of the nineteenth century, especially following emancipation, the fields of many of these plantations lay idle and they were used only as country residences.

Curaçao's Jews dominated both the legitimate and the contraband trade with Venezuela in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Article 15 of the commercial treaty between the Netherlands and Gran Colombia, signed in 1829, guaranteed freedom of religion to all Dutch residents of the mainland (Curaçaoan Jews being the majority who benefitted), and continued to be in force in Venezuela after the federation broke up. This paved the way for massive Jewish migration to major Venezuelan ports, especially Coro, Valencia, Barquisimeto, Puerto Cabello, Maracaibo and Caracas. Maracaibo had a considerable colony of Curaçaoan Jews already by the end of the eighteenth century. Puerto Cabello and Coro were other highly popular destinations; a Curaçaoan Jew was even named mayor of Coro in 1830.37 Nevertheless, due in part to the contraband trade, local sentiment in much of Venezuela ran against both the Jewish and Dutch immigrants from Curaçao; local authorities insisted that Curaçaoans remain neutral in the country's political disputes and refrain from importing arms. When Coro's Jews refused to continue subsidizing the garrison the local population rose against them, looting the shops of the prominent Maduro and Senior families; one hundred and sixty Jews departed for Curaçao, although many returned shortly thereafter.[38]

In the early twentieth century Curaçao's Jewish population saw the arrival of a new group: Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, who were ethnically different from the Sephardics (who traced their roots to the Mediterranean), as well as having somewhat different religious practices. These new arrivals were fleeing persecution; so41mething that was generations removed from the experience of the established Sephardic elite. A small group of Middle Eastern Jews also arrived in the early twentieth century. Both groups established a niche for themselves in the commercial sector, but at the bottom, turning to the largely neglected sector of local retail trade and later in the century, tourism. Unlike the traditional elite, however (and perhaps in large part because of the changing times), many of them did not pass their businesses on to their children, who often studied abroad and became professionals, rather than merchants.

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Curaçao Chamber of Commerce & Industry