The Forgotten Diaspora Mark Horta Paperback Cambridge University Press

The Forgotten DiasporaJewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World\nAuthor(s): Peter Mark, Jos da Silva Horta\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781107667464, 978-1107667464\nSynopsis\nThis book traces the history of early seventeenth-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petite Cte. There, they lived as public Jews, under the spiritual guidance of a rabbi sent by the newly established Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam and were protected from agents of the Inquisition by local Muslim rulers. The Petite Cte communities included several Jews of mixed Portuguese-African heritage as well as African wives, offspring, and servants. The blade weapons trade was an important part of their commercial activities. These merchants participated marginally in the slave trade but fully in the arms trade, illegally supplying West African ma.