Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade
Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael
"Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade; indeed, the
bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia congregations (1648) included an imposta
(Jewish tax) of five soldos for each Negro slave a Brazilian Jew purchased from
the West Indies Company. Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish
holiday. In Curacao in the seventeenth century, as well as in the British
colonies of Barbados and Jamaica in the eighteenth century, Jewish merchants
played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies,
whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently
dominated.
"This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the
eighteenth century Jews participated in the ’triangular trade’ that brought
slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses,
which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in
Africa. Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750’s, David Franks of Philadelphia
in the 1760’s, and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760’s and early 1770’s
dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent."