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Maarten Janssen, 2014-

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1672. Carta de Samuel Nassi para o tio Abraão Drago.

Author(s) Samuel Nassi      
Addressee(s) Abraão Drago      
In English

Family letter from Samuel Nassi to his uncle, Abraão Drago.

The author reports what he has sent and complains about the bad state in which various goods have arrived.

Given the suspicion that the Sephardic communities were trafficking goods and information to the detriment of the English Crown, several ships coming from or going to the Netherlands on their behalf were intercepted. In fact, the provisions in the Cromwell Navigation Acts prohibited the commercial contacts of the English colonies with the Netherlands, Spain, France and their overseas possessions. The proceedings that were initiated, under the guard at the Supreme Court of Admiralty, arose in the context of four moments of great tension between those two powers: the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667); the 3rd Anglo-Dutch War (1672-1674); the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763); and, finally, the 4th Anglo-Dutch War (1781-1784). The documentation found on board and preserved in the archive - private correspondence and cargo records - was taken as documentary evidence of the practice of cargo smuggling at sea. The letters described here are also demonstrative of the quality of the relationships within Sephardic families (Jews and converted), with the existence of strategically distributed social networks: on the one side, the settlers positioned below the Equator, more precisely in one area of the West Indies’ Seven Provinces (in the Caribbean), as part of the Dutch overseas territories; on the other, family and business partners, located in the main ports in the North Atlantic, important centers of financial and commercial activities. Incidentally, in some of these letters we may observe the occurrence of loanwords of English and Dutch origin belonging to the lexical-semantic field of trade relations. Examples of this are “ousove” and “azoes”, for the English “hoshead” or the Dutch “okshoofd”, an ancient measure of volume. In the present case, we have a set of letters that were transported on board the Dutch vessels Het witte Zeepaard, Bijenkorf, Fort Zeeland and Gekroonde Prins. They were coming from the port of Paramaribo and bound for an important and strategic port of the Company of the West Indies - Flushing, in North America - through the Caribbean.

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[1]
sor Tio Abraham Drago Serenam 8 sepbro 1673
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por ir não este navio de sem carta ma faço

[3]
estas duas Regras em q digo acharme algo
[4]
milhorado posto q inda com febre e gde
[5]
fastio Ds seja nosso mezinhador.
[6]
Ja avizei como no Roterdamer remeti a Vm
[7]
13: oock asúcar e em Voog em sirca de
[8]
9000: pao Letro q espero aja Vm rece
[9]
e vendido pa ma qta e avendo ocazião
[10]
se ouver pazes mandarme seu prosedido
[11]
em farinha e carne Casser e durando as
[12]
guerras me empregara Vm ditto montar
[13]
em pano Branco de 1/2: the 18: placas
[14]
segurandomo e remetendoo pr qlqr via que
[15]
seja q he este o tpo de se avancar mto
[16]
se se aserta.
[17]
avizei a Vm me prometeu alonço da fonseca
[18]
mandaria o asucar q agora comessa a fazer
[19]
e se venderia pr sua qta e de seu prossedido
[20]
se pagaria Vm.
[21]
avizei serem Bem maos os generos q vie
[22]
rão. a carne posto q Boa hum Barris tuda
[23]
ossos outros nada outros tirada a polpa. os
[24]
queixos tudo em pasta plas taboas q vem
[25]
entre elles não ter descanço se não nos mes
[26]
mos queixos. o azte tudo Borra e as Bo
[27]
tijas so de 3: the 3zsto

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