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Archiver > CARIBBEAN > 2003-07 > 1059251715


From: "John Weiss" <>
Subject: Re: Slave Immigrants from West Africa/Jews
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 21:35:15 +0100
References: <001c01c35326$346988a0$cb079ad8@oemcomputer> <005501c353a9$2da56ba0$316b1dd1@inforamp.net>


Dorothy has given some extremelyvaluable information here, but I think it's
time that Sara Weiss (no relation) was let off the hook, particularly in
view of Richard Allicock's interesting explanation of how the term Ethiopia
was formerly used to mean the whole of Africa. Bear in mind that Ethiopians
(in the form of Falasha) are the only African faces seen normally in
Israel, and it's not surprising if two different themes got confused in her
informant's mind; after all, this is not the strangest misconception to come
up in the kind of research that members of this list engage in, whether it's
the history of families or larger groups.

The community of the Company Villages in the south of Trinidad is a case in
point - there has long been a story that the American ancestors had fought
alongside the British in the American War of Independence, whereas probably
none of them had been born at that time, and their escape from American
slavery as members of the Corps of Colonial Marines, recruited by the
British, was several decades later, in the War of 1812. And there is another
well-worn story in that community's history, that one of the six companies
of the Corps, the Second, never arrived in Trinidad on account of being
shipwrecked off the coast of Jamaica; but I have found that the Second
Company arrived at the same time as the rest, I know where most of them had
their land-grants, and I have spoken to some of their descendants. The first
error is easy to understand, a simple displacement in time from a
little-known war to a famous one, but the second is more difficult; my
explanation, since I believe that all such misconceptions must have some
kind of historical basis, assumes that the origin of the story came from
linking the absence of a named Second Company Village with an earlier
Trinidad community’s memories of the shipwreck in June 1800 of HMS Dromedary
carrying the 2nd West India Regiment in the Bocas, a spectacle which is
reported to have engaged the citizens of Port-of-Spain for nearly two days,
and which must have been long remembered - a military contingent that was
also 'Second' and also Black.

So, a plea for more gentle treatment of newcomers with fantastic stories.

John Weiss
http://homepage.virgin.net/john.weiss/trinidad/Trinidad.html





----- Original Message -----
From: "Dorothy Kew" <>
To: <>
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: Slave Immigrants from West Africa/Jews


: Maybe it's about time I got back into this thread, seeing as Richard has
now
: moved on to Jews from Africa! I had planned to post to the list regarding
a
: recent book on Jews in the Caribbean, and this is as good a time as any.
:
: For those of you with Jewish Caribbean ancestry, who are serious about
doing
: the research, I recommend the following: --
:
: Mordechai Arbell. The Jewish nation of the Caribbean: the
: Spanish-Portuguese Jewish settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas.
: (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2002). 384 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, index.
:
: Arbell, who fled with his family to Israel from Bulgaria during the second
: World War, spent time as consul in Bogota, Colombia, as ambassador to
: Panama, and as ambassador to Haiti. He has been researching for many
years
: the history of Jews who live in Central and South America and the
Caribbean.
: Previously, he published a small book on the history of Portuguese Jews in
: Jamaica. In this book Arbell covers the Jewish settlements on the South
: American coast, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cayenne, Tobago, Pomeroon,
Surinam,
: Curacao, St. Eustatius, Barbados Nevis, Jamaica, the Danish West Indies,
and
: Haiti. He traces their movements from the expulsion from Spain to the
: migration from Portugal to other parts of Europe and thence to the
: Caribbean.
:
: A few Jews were involved in the slave trade, particularly in Curacao and
: Jamaica (Hyman Levy and Alexandre Lindo), but they were considered the
: exception. In fact, as Eli Faber has shown in his book, "Jews, slaves and
: the slave trade", the Jews were overall not involved and in fact, in some
: cases for some time were allowed to own very few slaves. However, this is
: not the point I'm trying to make. What I am saying is that to suggest
that
: the Jews who settled the Caribbean and South America came from Africa is
: just completely wrong. There is ample documentation to show that they
were
: Sephardic Jews originally from Spain and Portugal.
:
: I had assumed back when Sara made her comment that she was being
facetious.
: I certainly hope that anyone who is researching their Jewish roots in the
: Caribbean will not take such a claim seriously.
:
: Dorothy


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