Despite the polemical subtitle, a scholarly and meticulously
researched account of Jewish participation in the slave trade in
the British colonies of the Caribbean and in the US. In 1991, the
Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam published an
inflammatory document entitled The Secret Relationship Between
Blacks and Jews, which charged that Jews had financed and dominated
the slave trade in the American colonies and early US. According to
Faber (History/John Jay College, City University of New York), this
study's conclusions have been widely accepted as fact, despite
grave defects in historical methodology, with deleterious
consequences for historical scholarship and race relations. Here
limiting his study to slavery in the British Atlantic colonies in
the 17th through the 19th centuries, the author uses primary source
material, including shipping and tax records and other commercial
documents, to refute the anti-Semitic theme of The Secret
Relationship. Faber concludes that Jewish involvement in the
Atlantic slave trade was exceedingly limited: by successively
examining the small, (initially predominantly Sephardic) Jewish
communities of Barbados, Nevis, and Jamaica, and mainland colonies
like Newport and New York City, Faber persuasively demonstrates
that Jewish participation in the slave trade in each area consisted
of tiny percentages of slave sales and ownership, from the earliest
years of settlement through the abolition of the slave trade in the
19th century. A well-researched study that neither allocates blame
nor exonerates the participants in the peculiar institution, but
puts to rest a pernicious anti-Semitic libel of recent coinage.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Lays to rest the controversial myth of Jewish involvement in the
slave trade In the wake of the civil rights movement, a great
divide has opened up between African American and Jewish
communities. What was historically a harmonious and supportive
relationship has suffered from a powerful and oft-repeated legend,
that Jews controlled and masterminded the slave trade and owned
slaves on a large scale, well in excess of their own proportion in
the population. In this groundbreaking book, likely to stand as the
definitive word on the subject, Eli Faber cuts through this cloud
of mystification to recapture an important chapter in both Jewish
and African diasporic history. Focusing on the British empire,
Faber assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the
institution of slavery through investment in slave trading
companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as
merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and
direct ownership of slaves. His unprecedented original research
utilizing shipping and tax records, stock-transfer ledgers,
censuses, slave registers, and synagogue records reveals, once and
for all, the minimal nature of Jews' involvement in the subjugation
of Africans in the Americas. A crucial corrective, Jews, Slaves,
and the Slave Trade lays to rest one of the most contested
historical controversies of our time.
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