[1] EQUAL PARTNERS?

PROSELYTISING BY AFRICANS AND

JEWS IN THE 17TH CENTURY ATLANTIC DIASPORA

Tobias Green*

Abstract: This paper examines the processes by which Africans proselytised Sephardic Jews on the
coast of West Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries and were in their turn proselytised by Jews both in
West Africa and elsewhere in the Atlantic world in the early modern era. Drawing on a wide range of
archival and published sources, it shows that these activities were far from unusual in the Atlantic world
at the time, and are evidence of a world of receptivity and understanding that belies traditional
interpretations of Atlantic history. Analysing the conditions which produced the atmosphere in which
such mutual conversions could occur, the paper argues that a relatively equitable balance of power was
central to this process. Personal knowledge and human experience were crucial in breaking down
cultural barriers in a way which permitted conversion; however, the wider economic forces which
facilitated these exchanges were themselves distorting power relations, helping to shape Atlantic history
on its more familiar, and intolerant, path.

The Atlantic Sephardic diaspora is one which remains unfamiliar to some historians of the
early modern period. Only recently, indeed, has it become a focus of study for mainstream
historiography.1 Yet this was, in the 16th and early 17th centuries, a diaspora which was
almost of equal import to the trajectory of Sephardic Jews as that in the Ottoman Empire.
Retaining a variable degree of Judaism beneath the cloak of an enforced Christian faith,
these Sephardic New Christians became important players on both sides of the Atlantic
world: in Madeira, Cabo Verde and São Tomé, and in Brazil, Mexico and Peru.
In the vast geographical space which was occupied by this diaspora, there has now been a
reasonable amount of research and publication devoted to the Sephardic New Christians of
the American sphere.2 Only recently, however, has there been any sustained research and
publication on the question of the activity of the diaspora in Africa. Here, landmark new
ZM[MIZKPJa5IZSIVL0WZ\I5MVLM[IVL/ZMMVPI[]VKW^MZMLI[QOVQÅKIV\IUW]V\I[\W\PM
activities of a group of Sephardim living and trading on the petite côteWN ;MVMOITQV\PMÅZ[\
three decades of the 17th century (Mark/Horta 2004; Mendes 2004; Green 2005; 2008).3

* Post-doctoral Fellow, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. Email: T.O.Green@bham.
ac.uk
1
One should cite here particularly the essays in Bernardini and Fiering (eds.) (2001); Wachtel (2001); and Israel
(2002).
2
Looking at Brazil, one can cite the work of Novinsky (1972) and Salvador (1969) and (1978): for Colombia
there is the recent excellent work of Splendiani (1997), whilst for Peru both Millar Carvacho (1997) and Castañeda
Delgado/Hernández Aparicio (1989; 1995) have done important work.
3
The petite côte comprises the space between the Cape Verde peninsula where the modern city of Dakar is
located in Senegal – the westernmost point of Africa – south to the deltas of Sîne-Saloum, a coastline of
approximately 150 kilometres. For a more precise view, see the map of the Caboverdean region (downloadable from
http://www.mucjs.org/MELILAH/articles.htm).
2 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

This research has been very revealing. The Sephardim in question originated from
Amsterdam, and belonged to that group of New Christians who had sought religious
sanctuary in the Dutch United Provinces and returned to their ancestral faith. Their
presence in Senegambia was related to the trade in wax and hides in which the region
specialised in these years (Green 2005: 172–3). The community grew to be quite sizeable in
the second decade of the 17th century, running its own prayer meetings with the help of
Torahs imported from Europe, and having ritual butchers who killed meat according to the
laws of kashrut (Mark/Horta 2004: 247, 251). However, following a disastrous trading
expedition in 1612 led by the community’s leader, Jacob Peregrino, the Sephardic community
in Senegal fell into a long decline from which it never recovered (Green 2005: 180–182).
One of the investors in these trading ventures from Amsterdam to West Africa was a
KMZ\IQV,QWOW,QI[9]MZQLW,QI[9]MZQLWQ[IVQV\MZM[\QVOÅO]ZMNZWU\PMXMZQWL_PWPI[
JMMVLQ[K][[MLJa^IZQW][PQ[\WZQIV[QV\PMÅMTL?QbVQ\bMZ!"#;KPWZ[KP" 
He appears to have developed his experience of the Atlantic world through managing a
[]OIZ ZMÅVMZa QV *IPyI VWZ\PMI[\MZV *ZIbQT QV \PM  [ ?QbVQ\bMZ !"  0MZM PM
developed a reputation as a crypto-Jew, and may have been tried by the Portuguese
Inquisition during the inquisitorial visit to north-eastern Brazil of 1591–1595.4 He arrived
in Amsterdam towards the end of the 16th century and was one of the founder members of
*M\PAIPIKWJ\PMÅZ[\[aVIOWO]MQV\PMKQ\a
[2] <PMZMQ[[WUMKQZK]U[\IV\QITM^QLMVKM[]OOM[\QVO\PI\,QI[9]MZQLW¼[_WZSQV*IPyI
may have brought him into personal contact with the peoples of the Senegambian coast in
the 1580s.5 This may perhaps explain his willingness to invest heavily in trading voyages to
the region once established in Amsterdam, and also perhaps one of the more controversial
elements of his Jewish practice in the Dutch United Provinces: for Dias Querido was one of
those who actively sought to convert his African slaves to Judaism (Schorsch 2004: 178; see
also IAN/TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 59, folio 130v).
The conversion of a Jewish master’s slaves to Judaism was in fact far from unknown in
Amsterdam, and, later, in the Sephardic colony of Suriname (Arbell 2002: 108). The
congregational records of the 1640s reveal several interdictions regarding the participation
of African members of the congregation in synagogal services (GAA, Portuguese Jewish
Archives, Book 19, folios 173, 224, 281). This is evidence both of a reasonable African
contingent in the congregation, and of a hardening of the inclusiveness which had
characterised the congregation in its early years, a hardening which itself was probably the
corollary of an increasingly racialised discourse as the 17th century unfolded.
At the same time, moreover, as Africans were being converted to Jews in Amsterdam (and
elsewhere), an analogous process was occurring in reverse on the West African coast.
Sephardim who had taken up residence in Senegambia, and second and third generation
Sephardic New Christians residing here and on the Guinea Coast, increasingly adopted

4
IbidILMXW[Q\QWV\W\PMQVY]Q[Q\WZ[WN 4Q[JWVIN\MZ9]MZQLW¼[LMI\PVW\ML\PI\_PMVQV*IPyIPMPILJMMVIV
intimate of New Christians suspected of Judaising (IAN/TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 209, folio 679r).
5
Thus in André Alvares d’Almada’s account of the Senegambian region, written in 1578, he stated that the
island of Gorée – situated just a few miles to the north of where the subsequent Sephardic communities of
Senegambia were located – was a port of call for most of the foreign ships going to Sierra Leone, the pepper coast
(Liberia), Brazil and the Spanish Indies. Moreover, says Almada, here they dealt with the mayor of Portudal (sic) –
the subsequent centre for Jewish communities in the region – who was the overseer of the Wolof king’s property.
Almada (1994: 35).
 EQUAL PARTNERS? (TOBIAS GREEN) 3

elements of African religion.6 This was indeed a long-standing process, since as long ago as
1546 an accusation had been made to the Portuguese inquisitorial tribunal of Évora that the
New Christians who lived on the African coast were adopting elements of African religious
practice (A. Teixeira da Mota 1978: 8).7
This paper seeks to build on this evidence of a mutual receptivity of Sephardim and the
peoples of this part of West Africa towards the religious practices of one another. For in this
evidence of accommodation and reciprocity emerge ideas concerning the practice and
the relationship of Africans and Europeans in this period which are at odds with some
more traditional historiography. The willingness of Africans and Jews to adopt the faiths of
one another hints at a clear acceptance by each group of certain common values, and
at a level of cultural respect – it is not a world of exclusion, prejudice and unmitigated
exploitation.8
Thus through this investigative framework we can attempt to answer some critical
questions. What was it that allowed distinct groups such as Senegambians and Sephardim
\W ÅVL I [PIZML KWV\M`\ NWZ \PMQZ ZMTQOQW][ XZIK\QKM' )VL _PI\ _I[ Q\ Ja KWV\ZI[\ _PQKP
allowed this shared context to be overshadowed, permitting a more polarised Atlantic
world to emerge? By studying how the process of mutual conversion worked, and how it
eventually declined, we can perhaps begin to understand whether the Atlantic world which
eventually emerged in the long 18th century had to be as brutal and as tragic as it turned out
to be.

[3] By the early 17th century, one of the most unlikely centres for proselytising activity on the
part of Jewry was the coast of West Africa. Many of the Sephardic New Christians who
apostasised from Christianity and began to practise elements of Judaism did so after visiting
the ports of Senegambia and Upper Guinea.9 One of them, Antonio Espinosa, gave a
typical account of the evangelical activities of Jews in the port of Cacheu (modern Guiné-
Bissau) circa 1630:
One day he and his crewmates gathered with four Portuguese men who knew Captain
Correa [the captain of the ship in which Espinosa was sailing, who had already tried to
convert Espinosa to Judaism] and they all said so many things to [Espinosa] about the
Mosaic law, discoursing about it for a long time, and recounting how God had given the law
to Moses on the mountain, and how on his descent from it he had found the people of Israel

6
The region of Senegambia comprises the area between the estuaries of the rivers Senegal and Gambia (the
northern section of the modern country of Senegal); the Guinea Coast refers to the land south of the Gambia in
what today is southern Senegal, Guiné-Bissau and northern Guinea.
7
The accusation stated that they had become polygamous and were indulging in animist rites; however it should
be noted that polygamy is not itself universally prohibited by the Jewish faith.
8
This is, moreover, a direction in which recent historiography on both the Guinea Coast region and on Creole
Societies of the Lusophone world is beginning to move. Lingna Nafafé (2007) argues strongly for a climate of
mutual exchange rather than of mutual hostility on the Guinea Coast in this region, whilst the essays on Creole
societies in Havik and Newitt (eds.) (2007) emphasise as a whole the need for co-operation in the construction of the
Creole world.
9
For a full discussion of the role of West Africa in the apostasy of crypto-Jews of the 17th century, see Green
(2007c).
4 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

fallen into idolatry, spending more than a whole sheet of paper explaining this to him, so
that at the end [Espinosa] decided to follow the Mosaic law himself.10
However, this evangelical activity was not limited to the New Christians (and Old
Christians) who passed through the region. The more devout Sephardim in the area began
to proselytise some of their African servants and slaves. A document written in around 1620
referring to the “stubbornness” [pertinacia] of the New Christians around the world cited
especially the dangers of the New World Amerindians being “perverted” by the many New
Christians who were then making their way to the Viceroyalty of Peru via the River Plate. It
was noted that:
. . . the Gentiles [Amerindians] are at great risk of being taught Judaism, as experience has shown
that this occurs in some of the provinces of Guinea, where [the people of the Hebrew nation]
manage to teach Jewish rites and ceremonies to the Gentiles.11
This general evidence related to the conversion of Africans to Judaism on the Guinea Coast
KIVJM[]XXTMUMV\MLJaW\PMZÅVLQVO[QV\PMZMTM^IV\IZKPQ^M[5]TI\\W2M_[JMTWVOML\W\PM
congregation of Sephardim established in Portudal, Senegambia, in the 1610s (IAN/TT,
Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 58, folio 155r; IAN/TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 205, folio
583v). And moreover there was a widespread anxiety among the Christian community of
the Portuguese settlements of West Africa regarding the religious activities of the Sephardim.
Thus in a letter of July 30th 1635, the Bishop of Cabo Verde recounted a story which, for
him, had all the hallmarks of another Jewish conversion in West Africa. Three African
servants had circumcised themselves, although they were Christians; this was a matter of
perplexity, since they gave signs of being good Christians: nonetheless, they were put in the
stocks and given harsh penance as a warning to others (IAN/TT, Inquisição de Lisboa,
Livro 217, folio 475v).
1V \PQ[ TI[\ KI[M WVM KIV [MM UIVa WN  \PM LQNÅK]T\QM[ _PQKP MUMZOM _PMV \ZaQVO \W
understand this question of conversion by Africans to Judaism. The bishop of Cabo Verde
IXXMIZML\WI[[]UM\PI\KQZK]UKQ[QWV_I[IVQZZMN]\IJTM[QOVWN 2M_Q[PQVÆ]MVKMIVL_I[
therefore somewhat confused by the strong signs of Christian faith among these “converts”.
Yet circumcision was just as strong a cultural practice for the peoples of the coasts of
Senegambia and Guinea as it was for Sephardim. It may well be that there was nothing
“Jewish” about this last trait at all, and that the auto-circumcision of these three Africans
was merely a melding of their ancestral practice with Christianity.
The problem with such cases, in other words, is that of the perceptions and preconceptions
of the sources. There was a certain blurring at the edges in the way in which Sephardim and
Africans were perceived by [4] Iberian Christians of the early modern period. This makes
[XMKQÅK[I[ZMOIZL[\PMXZMKQ[MZQ\]ITIK\Q^Q\QM[WN 2]LIQ[U_PQKP)NZQKIV[may have adopted
in Senegambia elusive. As Sephardim had until recently been the stereotyped “other” of
Iberian culture, Africans were often perceived through a Sephardic lens. It was this which
TML[WUMWN \PMÅZ[\VI^QOI\WZ[\WZMIKP\PM;MVMOIUJQIVKWI[\\WJMTQM^M\PI\\PMZM_MZM

10
AHN, Sección Inquisición, Libro 1031, folios 114v–115r. Original: “y todos le dixeron al reo tantas cosas de la lei de
moisses discurriendo el reo mui largo en ellas, y en el modo que dios abia dado la lei de Moisses en el monte, y como bajando del habia
hallado que los del pueblo de isrrael abian idolatrado, gastando en esto mas de un pliego de papel, q al cavo el reo se avia resuelto de
guardar la dicha lei”.
11
BL, Egerton, MS 344, folios 98r–v. Original: “como por experiencia le tienen visto q hacen en algunas provincias de
Guinea, adonde procuran ensenhar las cerimonias y ritos Judaicos a los Gentiles”.
 EQUAL PARTNERS? (TOBIAS GREEN) 5

communities of Jews here already – the griots, or praisesingers, whom, like Iberian Jews,
lived in ghettos, married within their caste and were buried outside the communal cemetery.12
In such circumstances, the existence of a corroborative source for the conversions of
Africans to Judaism is important, and in this case we are fortunate to have such a source
through the existence of the aforementioned converted African Jews who were members of
the Amsterdam synagogue in the early 17th century. Here the thorough research of Jonathan
Schorsch on the relationship between Africans and Jews in the Atlantic world is of interest.
Schorsch notes how no more than 15 Africans were buried in the community cemetery at
Oudekerk in the years 1614–30 and 1680–1716 (Schorsch 2004: 178). This implies a
thorough integration into the rituals of Judaism, as does the above-cited regulation that
Africans could not read Torah portions in the synagogue of Amsterdam – implying that
hitherto they had done so.13 Although, as Schorsch notes, this must have represented a very
small minority of cases, it nonetheless is evidence that such conversions did occur, and
therefore supports the evidence noted above that they also occurred in West Africa.
Moreover, that the Sephardic communities of the Atlantic world were open to the
conversion of Africans or those of African descent is attested by subsequent developments in
the Atlantic. As Arbell has shown, the Dutch colony of Surinam on the northern coast of
South America is of particular relevance here. In Surinam, the Sephardic population
amounted to something like one third of the total population of free persons in the colony.
Some of the Sephardim had sexual relations with African slaves in the colony, and a number
of mixed race children were born (Arbell 2002: 108).
Although most of these children had not been born to Jewish mothers, many of them
were instructed in the Jewish faith and took the names of Portuguese Jews. In the mid-18th
century, as the community gravitated from the plantations towards Paramaribo, the colony’s
capital, many of these free mulattos became craftsmen and shopkeepers, some becoming
quite wealthy. A ruling of 1754 entitled them to be admitted as members of the Jewish
community, if not as yehidimN]TTÆMLOMLUMUJMZ[IVLJa!Isiva, or brotherhood of
Jewish mulattos was established known as Darkhe Sevarim (The Ways of the Righteous).14
While this congregation consisted largely of the descendants of male Sephardim, and
thus not of non-Jews who had been converted per se, the 1787 Hascamoth of the congregation
included a provision which made it clear that blacks and mulattos were freely joining the
congregation even though they had no Jewish forebears:
About the difference between a full member and a congregant, it is resolved that all Jewish
mulattos, blacks, mestizas and castices who carry the name of, or are known to be descended from
the Portuguse/Spanish nation, will be considered “Congreganten”. All other Negroes (sic) and
Mulatto Jews who want to join voluntarily in the Portuguese Jewish persuasion as “Congregant”,
_QTTJMWJTQOML\WINÅZU\PQ[_Q\P\PMQZ[QOVI\]ZMI\\PM\QUMWN \PMQZIKKMX\IVKMWVMIVLNWZITT
on equal terms.15
It is not clear from this Hascamah whether these converts were proselytised or whether they
were voluntary congregants attracted in part by a thriving religious community. Yet even if

12
This issue is discussed in much greater detail in Green (2007b), Part I.
13
See above, 2.
14
Ibid. The yehidim constituted the core of the community from which readers of Torah portions, and ritual
WNÅKMZ[_MZMKPW[MV<PM\MZU][MLQ[\PI\WN \PMKWVOZMOI\QWVQ\[MTN
15
Ibid. Note that “congreganten” is the Dutch spelling.
6 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

this cannot therefore be taken as evidence of an overt, proselytising effort on the part of the
Sephardim in the Atlantic [5]world, it does still show a certain openness and tolerance of
difference within the Sephardic community, and a recognition on the part of some that
Africans, or those of African origin, could be members of a Jewish community.16
When one considers this evidence on the conversion of Africans to Judaism, it appears
both logical and anomalous. The logic follows on from the fact that, in contrast to the
stereotypes which existed – and exist – with regards to the closed nature of the Jewish
community, Jews had traditionally been open to the conversion of non-Jews into their fold.
As the scholar of the Sephardim, B. Netanyahu, has pointed out, the great Jewish sage born
in medieval Iberia, Maimonides, had once written that people of all nations were able to be
Jews,17_PQTMQV:WUIV\QUM[+I[[Q][,QWPIL_ZQ\\MV\PI\PMKW]TLVW\LMÅVM_PW\PM2M_[
were “except to say that they are a people of different races who follow the laws of the
Jews”.18
Yet in spite of this history of openness there is something anomalous in this story, and this
is that it was in opposition to the prevailing trends of the early modern era. For while it is
true that the Jewish faith had in ancient and even medieval times been open to people
converting from other faiths, it is also true that in Iberia this openness had been severely
curtailed by the mid-13th century statutes of Alfonso X “el sabio” prohibiting any proselytising
activity on the part of Jews (and Moslems).
Nevertheless, the evidence shows that this proselytising is what occurred, at least somewhat,
in the early modern Atlantic. What is implied is a certain openness towards Africa and
Africans on the part of the Sephardim, and towards Judaism on the part of Africans. It was
in fact those Sephardim who had close personal knowledge of Africa and Africans who
generally engaged in proselytising activity, men such as Diogo Dias Querido or the slave
owners of Surinam. Knowledge and understanding of those of a different culture could
bring respect and a desire to integrate, as the Sephardim themselves had discovered in West
Africa.

While, as this paper has already noted, an active Sephardic community did exist on the
Senegambian coast in the early 17th century, most of the Sephardic New Christians who
came to this part of West Africa in the early modern period did so nominally as Christians.
Whilst some of them retained a deep attachment to Judaism, and practised elements of the
faith’s rituals, most practised a sort of hybrid faith, maintaining some of the cultural and
religious traditions of Judaism and some of those of Christianity; others were outright
sceptics of all religion, perhaps hardly surprising given the experience of their parents’

16
By contrast, the arrival of Ashkenazim in Paramaribo in the late 18th century caused severe tensions between
)[PSMVIbQUIVL;MXPIZLQUIVLIN\MZILQNÅK]T\[XMTTWN KWM`Q[\MVKM\PM)[PSMVIbQUJ]QT\I[MXIZI\M[aVIOWO]M
Ibid., 108–111.
17
Netanyahu (1997), 6 n.30: any person “who becomes a proselyte anywhere, whether he is an Edomite, an
Ammonite, a Moabite, an Ethiopian [African] or of any other nation, and whether male or female, he is permitted
to enter the congregation at once”.
18
Ibid., 6.
 EQUAL PARTNERS? (TOBIAS GREEN) 7

generation in Iberia.19 As Israel has shown, the categories of “Jew” and “Crypto-Jew” were
\WIKMZ\IQVLMOZMMIZ\QÅKQITQV\PMMIZTaUWLMZV)\TIV\QK#\PMZM_I[UWZMWN IKWV\QV]]U
between the two groups, with individuals practising greater or lesser degrees of Judaism and
Christianity (Israel 2002: 146).
Many of these New Christian lançados adapted quickly to cultural practices of West Africa.
Already, as we have seen, by 1546 the New Christians of Guinea were said to be adopting
elements of African religion.20 Similarly, the most powerful Portuguese in the Senegambian
region in the middle of the 16th century, known as Ganagoga, was a New Christian who
had made a marriage alliance with the Fulani king (Almada 1994: 36; see also Carreira
1972: 67-8).21 This can only have been possible through the willingness of Ganagoga to
assimilate into the dominant cultural atmosphere of the Fulani of Futa Toro.22
Indeed, the trajectory of the New Christians in this region of West Africa in the 16th and
17th century centuries is largely that of a small minority group gradually being assimilated.
While in the 17th century New Christian escapees from the Inquisition such as Alvaro
Gonçalves Frances and João Rodrigues Freire continued to practise Jewish rituals in the
region, and to convert New Christians to crypto-Judaism, their children became fully
assimilated.23 Alvaro’s son Jorge, for instance, married a certain Crispina Peres who was later
tried by the Inquisition in Lisbon on charges of witchcraft, having performed certain local
religious practices in the port of Cacheu; in his testimony to the inquisitors, written in the
mid-1660s, Jorge Gonçalves Frances recounted how there were only four people in Cacheu
who followed the Catholic ritual without incorporating any pagan rituals.24 As there
remained not an inconsiderable population of New Christians there at this date, this is
evidence that many of them had adopted African religious practice.
The religious world which the Sephardim found on the coast of Guinea was one that was
both familiar and strange. During her trial by the Inquisition in the 1660s, Jorge Gonçalves
Frances’s wife, Crispina Peres, was accused of sorcery and worshipping fetishes, of organising
pagan ceremonies on one of Jorge Gonçalves Frances’s boats which involved a libation with
cow’s blood, of using local healers when her daughter fell ill in an attempt to discover who
had poisoned her, and of keeping a bewitched snake.25 This belief in and use of bewitched

19
The variety of different religious positions of the New Christians in Cabo Verde is exposed fully in Green
(2007b).
20
See above, n.7.
21
“Ganagoga” meant “someone who speaks all languages” in the language of the Bainung people of Casamance
(southern Senegal). Almada says that this is how this individual was known in the region, whereas his original name
was João Ferreira. Almada is in fact the only source we have for this individual’s New Christian origins, and
/IVIOWOIQ[WVTa^MZaJZQMÆaUMV\QWVMLQVWVMW\PMZ[W]ZKMNWZ\PMXMZQWL
22
The Fulani, also known as the Peul, are a nomadic people who can be found from the Futa Toro region of
northern Senegal through to Hausaland in northern Nigeria. In Senegal, their lands bordered the Wolof kingdoms
to the east. There is also a considerable Fulani grouping in modern Guinea, which originated after a migration to
the south led by the Fulani king Koli Tenguela in the 16th century. The Fulani have historically been thought of as
an outcast group in West African societies, not only because of their nomadism but also since they have a markedly
different appearance to other peoples in the region, being very tall and light-skinned. Ethnographers dispute as to
whether they migrated from the Yemeni region of Saudi Arabia or rather from ancient Egyptian civilisations. For a
more detailed grasp of the peoples of the region, see the “Peoples and Cultures” map (downloadable from http://
www.mucjs.org/MELILAH/articles.htm).
23
A full account of these practices and activities is found in Green (2007b): for Alvaro Gonçalves Frances see
Part III, Chapter 3; for João Rodrigues Freire, see Part IV, Chapter 3.
24
The best account of this is Havik (2004), 107–20.
25
Ibid., 107–8.
8 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

snakes in the cultural practice of this region of Africa is an ancient one that remained
current into the 20th century, as emerged in the famous autobiography of the Guinean
writer [7]Camara Laye, L’Enfant Noir, in which Laye described how – in the 1930s – his
father kept a certain black snake which warned him of all that was to happen (Green 2002:
72).26
Yet to go with this sense of foreignness were ritual practices which were familiar.
Circumcision was commonplace. The cultures of the Guinea Coast were matrilineal, in
keeping with the matrilineality of the Jewish faith (Newitt 1992: 42). And though polygamy
was practised, this is not itself universally prohibited by the Jewish faith. Instead the practice
of diasporic Jews has often been to follow the marital customs of their host cultures, that is
to be polygamous among the Moslems and monogamous among the Christians. Given this
heritage of adaptability, the demands of polygamy would have been acceptable to many
New Christians in West Africa.
In these circumstances one must recognise that there was a certain degree of inevitability
in the adoption of African religious practice by these Sephardic New Christians. Where
there were very few Jews, or even crypto-Jews, assimilation into the dominant cultural praxis
was an obvious choice. By the mid-17th century those who genuinely wanted to be Jews
were able to go to Amsterdam and London, or to the nascent communities in the Caribbean,
as well as to the Ottoman Empire. These were areas to which the African coast had a long-
standing connection, and thus those New Christians who failed to go were, by default, opting
for the adoption of African religious practice.
This might imply that the choice of whether or not to adopt African rituals was down to
the Sephardim themselves, were it not for an important additional datum. This is that the
only region in this part of West Africa which had a recognised synagogue, Senegambia, was
a region where many of these cultural characteristics did not pertain. The cultures in
Senegambia were patrilineal, not matrilineal like those of Guinea (Havik 2004: 26–7; Brooks
"·<PQ[_I[UWZMW^MZIZMOQWVPMI^QTaQVÆ]MVKMLJa1[TIU\PMZMTQOQWVWN \PM
dominant Wolof people of the region. These cultural factors were crucial to the existence of
the Jewish community in Senegambia. Judaism was a faith recognised and discussed in the
Qur’an, while the existence of a patrilineal culture made intermarriage and integration into
\PM PW[\ KWUU]VQ\a LQNÅK]T\ ibid.). In these circumstances, it was much easier for the
Sephardim to retain their own community and their separate practices which were
recognised by the dominant religion of the region, Islam.
Paradoxically, it was in fact precisely the cultural points of similarity in the region of
Guinea south of the Gambia river – matrilineality in particular – which made it easier for
Sephardim to assimilate into the host culture and to lose their distinctive Jewishness. The
conversion of the Jews to African religious practice was, therefore, whilst apparently a choice
WV\PMQZXIZ\QVÆ]MVKMLJaKWUXTM`K]T\]ZITNIK\WZ[_PQKPLMXMVLML]XWV)NZQKIVZMITQ\QM[
and decisions.
This reveals that in the case of the conversions both of Africans to Judaism and of Jews to
African religions, the main accent of emphasis for the conversion resided with the proselytiser
rather than the proselytised. In this sense, Africans and Sephardim were equal partners in

26
Camara Laye’s masterpiece, Le Regard du Roi, was reissued as The Radiance of the King by New York Review of
Books in 2001. This novel also references the use of snakes in the ritual of the Guinea coast.
 EQUAL PARTNERS? (TOBIAS GREEN) 9

the complex cultural interactions which accompanied the rise of the Atlantic world in the
early modern era. Each group had the cultural facility both to open to another cultural
practice, and to accept the other group into their practice. And this is of vital importance,
since this reality hints at a level of potential co-operation and understanding which is at odds
with the general perception of the trajectory of the Atlantic world in these years.

It is perhaps a melancholic truism that few movements are as new as they may seem. The
roots of many innovations may well be seen in previous developments. Often, a moment of
brilliance in art or literature [8]is itself derivative of something else; and the same can be
seen in social change, even in a space like the early modern Atlantic, which was in so many
ways an entirely novel space, and an early prototype for the sort of porous internationalism
so common in the 21st century.
This conversion of Africans and Jews to the religions of one another appears as something
of a surprise. But it is a surprise to readers of this paper perhaps largely because it is not a
subject which has hitherto been given much attention. To the individuals involved, and in
the time and space in which they moved, the reality would have been very different – and
not so much of a surprise.
Firstly, one must recognise that from the moment of African-European contact on the
coast of Guinea, a tradition developed of the conversion of Africans to the dominant
European religion, Christianity. This was of course most marked through the onset of the
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terms of the “saving” of African souls through their conversion to Christianity.27 The islands
of Cabo Verde were originally something of a holding ground for recently enslaved Africans,
where the new slaves were instructed in the rudiments of Christianity, “converted”, and then
shipped across the Atlantic to continue with their “saved” existence elsewhere.
The importance of the conversion of Africans to Christianity in the rising ideology of the
Atlantic world in the early modern era is underlined by the perception of Africans once this
process had been completed. For, unlike the Amerindians, African slaves were seen as falling
under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in America – as, in other words, fully rational
humans (Thornton 1998: 141; see also Green 2007c: 37). This therefore emphasised the role
of conversion in the moral underpinning of the slave trade and in the economic fabric of
the Atlantic world.
The key in this process transcended mere hypocrisy. What was at stake was the conversion
of the subjugated majority to the religion practised by the dominant minority – that is, to the
religion of the dominant power in the space in question. And this was something which in
NIK\_I[QVSMMXQVO_Q\PW\PMZ\ZMVL[QVIZMI[QVÆ]MVKMLJa\PM1JMZQIV_WZTLQV\PQ[XMZQWL
One must, for instance, recall that there was a precedent for this process of conversion
even in the recent history of the Sephardim themselves. As the brilliant scholars of the
Sephardim Netanyahu and Roth have convincingly argued, many of the Jews of Spain had
27
Here the authorities followed Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in asserting that one part of mankind had been
set aside by nature to be slaves in the service of masters, and that such a slave depended on his master to exercise his
choices for him. Russell-Wood (1978), 33–34.
10 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

converted to Christianity entirely voluntarily in the century between 1391 and 1492 (Roth
2002: 33-45; more generally, Netanyahu 1966, Kamen 1997, Green 2007a). While there
PIL JMMV [WUM QVQ\QIT ^QWTMVKM \PM KWV^MZ[QWV[ _PQKP NWTTW_ML \PM ÅMZa XZMIKPQVO WN  ;\
Vincent Ferrer and the debates at Tortosa in the early 15th century were due rather to the
failure of leadership and intellect in the Jewish community than to the conversions having
been mostly forced (Roth 2002: 45ff ).
Nor was this preceding history of conversion in Iberia limited to the Jews. Following the
NWZKMLKWV^MZ[QWVWN \PM5W[TMU[WN ;XIQVQV\PMÅZ[\aMIZ[WN \PM\PKMV\]ZaUIVaWN 
them genuinely desired to adopt the Christian faith. The development of the Moslem
apostasy in Spain was due principally to the abject failure of the religious authorities to
institute adequate instruction of the moriscos rather than to any inherent seditiousness of the
1[TIUQK¹ÅN\PKWT]UVº28 In 1570, the moriscos of Valencia asked to be given priests and have
churches built for them; otherwise, as they quite reasonably pointed out, “[we] will never be
good Christians” (BL, Egerton MS 1510, folio 153v).
Moreover, one should not believe that this history of conversion was limited to Africans,
Jews and Moslems. A common example of denunciations in the archives of the Portuguese
Inquisition relate to [9]Portuguese residents in the region of Ceuta (Morocco), then in
Portuguese hands, adopting the Islamic faith – that is, assimilating to the dominant creed of
North Africa. Elsewhere in North Africa, in 1623 Amador Lozado, the captain of the fort at
Arguim off the Mauritanian coast, was accused of being a secret Moslem, living with
Moslem concubines and oppressing all the Christians in the fortress (IAN/TT, Inquisição de
4Q[JWI4Q^ZWNWTQW[!Z·!Z6WZ_I[\PQ[XZWKM[[KWVÅVML\W)NZQKI[QVKMQV 
the inquisitors of Goa complained about the Old Christians who had gone to live among the
Moors and converted (IAN/TT, CGSO, Livro 100, folio 15r, 17r).
There were, in other words, many contemporary examples to hand of peoples adopting
the religions of others with whom they had come into close contact. In this sense there was
nothing unusual about the process which has been outlined in this paper with regard to the
Africans of the Upper Guinea Coast and the Sephardim. Yet as these examples also reveal,
this process of conversion usually occurred when one or other of the groups was in a position
of dominance within a given space. Thus what these stories of conversion can tell us is
something about both the political and social condition of various nodes in the Atlantic at
this time, and how the Africans and Sephardim viewed one another.
This is a subject which has recently entered the mainstream of Atlantic historiography
following Jonathan Schorsch’s magisterial book, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World
(Schorsch 2004). Schorsch’s analysis reveals the diversity of attitudes of Sephardim towards
Africans and African-descended peoples in the Atlantic world, ranging from outright racism
to co-operation and conversion. This range of attitudes suggests that the adoption of racist
attitudes in the Atlantic was by no means an inevitability. Many other types of relationship
_MZMXW[[QJTMI\\PMÅZ[\UMM\QVO[WN )NZQKIV[IVL-]ZWXMIV[QVKT]LQVO\PW[MWN ZMKQXZWKQ\a
and co-operation.29
From the foregoing analysis, it would appear that central elements in this framework of
reciprocity were personal experience and contact in a space with a relatively equitable

28
This argument is set out in detail in Green (2007a), Chapter 7.
29
This idea is explored in Nafafé (2007).
 EQUAL PARTNERS? (TOBIAS GREEN) 11

balance of power. Those Sephardim who did proselytise their slaves in Amsterdam appear,
like Diogo Dias Querido, often to have been those who had personal knowledge of the
African coast. At the same time, this contact was couched within a political reality where the
African kings were undisputed political masters of the coast.30 Personal relationships with
Africans derived from a sphere where there was an equitable balance of power which did
not foster prejudice, but rather a belief in a common, shared humanity, and in the
applicability of religious tropes to peoples of different backgrounds.
AM\I\\PM[IUM\QUM\PMÅZ[\aMIZ[WN \PM\ZIV[)\TIV\QK[TI^M\ZILMPILLWVMU]KP
to weaken the power of the polities of Senegambia and Upper Guinea. The arrival of more
horses had challenged existing military relationships and led to the fragmentation of the
Wolof empire into 5 sub-kingdoms; it may also have weakened the hold of the empire of
Mali over the principality of Kaabu, in modern Guiné-Bissau, leading to a power transfer
from Niani, the previous capital of Mali located on the border of modern Guinea and Mali,
to Songhai, further east into the central Sahel (Levtzion 1980: 96; Curtin 1975: 9). Thus,
although personal contacts between Sephardim and Africans could lead to reciprocity and
shared purpose, these contacts occurred within a wider framework where the conditions
necessary for these harmonious relationships – an equitable balance of power – were being
eroded.
One cannot therefore say that the rise of modern racism and prejudice in the Atlantic
world was an inevitability. The shared conversions of Africans and Sephardim outlined in
this paper, and the conditions in which they occurred, belie this familiar hypothesis. Yet at
the same time, the conditions for relationships based on mutual humanity were eroded by
economic conditions from the very moment that these relationships began. And thus, in
spite of this paper’s excursus into a secret history with more positive overtones, does the
trajectory of Atlantic history retain its classical aura of tragic inevitability.

[10]ABBREVIATIONS

AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid

BL British Library
CGSO +WV[MTPW/MZITLW;IV\W7NÅKKQW (documentary resource in IAN/TT)
GAA Gemeentearchief, Amsterdam
IAN/TT Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon

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