Sinagogas do açúcar : a presença judaica no Cabo de Santo Agostinho (1630-54)

Abstract

This dissertation work broaches the participation of Jews in the Atlantic trade in sugar; their trade, political and cultural in Brazil, established during the domination of West India Company (WIC), between the years 1630 and 1654 in the coastal region of Northeastern Brazil. For this, we propose initially setting the Dutch Society, business organization and the changing infrastructure social, commercial and ideological formation that allowed Jewish business networks in the period. From these networks we seek to understand the Jew as an individual networks that integrated economic, social, and cultural partners. We propose to map the presence of Jews in local elites during the invasion of WIC, as well as the networking policy, business, family and community, which allowed the sociability of Jews around the cities, where they kept the domination areas of sugar, which had its own dynamics, thus contributing to the development of colonial society and the transatlantic trade. For this, we restrict our study precisely to the current region of Cape St. Augustine, the first intake of the Dutch Company, and where they settled the first lords of mills, mines, and plantations Jewish parties. We sought to understand the social organization proposed by the Company for the domination of the area around the sugar mills, enabling the establishment of Jewish experiences in daily Isthmus of Recife and how these individuals had commercial relationships, where within each family had a way of living, permeated by kinship relations and trade. As a result of this research, we propose to examine setting synagogues in Recife, thanks to the dominance of sugar mills and sales in the European market through the triangular trade. Thus, from the Isthmus of Recife, the Jews were able to establish investments in land, adapting the behavior of Jewish political and territorial demands of the time. Thus, it was possible the integration and consolidation of these individuals in the society of the time, without losing their Jewish religious identity.