However, the "Setting the Record Straight" aspect of this history involves acknowledging that Jews did participate in the trade, particularly as merchants and middlemen in specific port cities. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Sephardic Jewish communities—descendants of those expelled from Spain and Portugal—established a "Western Sephardic Frontier." They settled in hubs like Amsterdam, London, Newport, Curacao, and Suriname. In these locations, Jewish merchants often focused on international trade. Because the colonial economy was inextricably linked to slave labor, any merchant involved in shipping sugar, tobacco, or cocoa was indirectly or directly involved with the institution of slavery.
In specific Caribbean colonies, such as Dutch Curacao or Suriname, Jewish involvement was more visible. In Curacao, Jewish merchants were active in the resale of enslaved people to the Spanish Main. In Suriname, Jewish planters owned significant sugar and coffee estates, and by the 18th century, they held a substantial portion of the colony's enslaved population. Even in these instances, however, Jewish slave ownership followed the prevailing laws and customs of the time. Jews did not invent the system, nor did they treat enslaved people in a manner fundamentally different from their non-Jewish counterparts. Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the ...
To understand the Jewish role in the slave trade, one must first look at the demographic reality of the colonial era. During the peak of the transatlantic trade, Jews made up a tiny fraction of the population in Europe and the Americas. Because their numbers were small, their overall impact on the slave trade was proportionally minor. The massive logistics of the Middle Passage—the financing of thousand-ton ships, the securing of royal monopolies, and the management of large-scale naval expeditions—were almost exclusively the domain of state-sponsored companies or wealthy Christian merchant dynasties in Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. However, the "Setting the Record Straight" aspect of