In April, 1661, Benjamin de Caseres, Henry de Caseres and Jacob Fraso petitioned the King of England to permit them to live and trade in Barbadoes and Surinam. Their petition was supported by the King of Denmark, which tends to prove that they must have been men of considerable importance. In the report made by the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, to whom it was referred, it is stated that the whole question of the advisability of allowing Jews to reside in and trade with his majesty’s colonies “hath been long and often debated.” The merchants of England were opposed to the admission of Jews, because of their ability to control trade wherever they entered, and because they would divert it from England to foreign countries. The planters, on the contrary, favored their admission and accused the merchants of aiming to appropriate the whole trade to themselves. The commissioners refrained from deciding the general question, but advised that these three highly recommended Jews, who had behaved themselves well and with general satisfaction in Barbadoes, should be granted a special license to reside there or in any other plantations.
The Jewish community was soon increased to a considerable extent, partly by the arrival of former members of the dissolved colony of Cayenne (1664). It is recorded in the minutes of the vestry of St. Michael’s Parish (July 9, 1666) “that the Jews inhabiting this Parish do pay the quantity of 35,000 pounds Muscovado sugar, to be levied by themselves and paid to Senior Lewis Dias and Senior Jeronimo Roderigos, who are hereby ordered to pay it to the present church wardens.” The order is repeated in October, 1666, and again in 1667; and in that year another order making the levy for the year 20,000 pounds was issued. In 1669 the order in January was for 14,000 pounds, and in March for 16,000. In 1670 it was again for 16,000, but the Jews sent in a petition declaring the amount to be excessive. This had the effect of reducing the amount of the tax to 7,000 pounds in 1671 and to “half of what was levied last year” in 1672. For the following five years it was mostly 7,000 pounds a year, “levied for their trade.” In 1680 it is 8,500 pounds, apportioned among forty-five Jews, some being made to contribute only twelve pounds, several others as high as 792 each, with David Raphael de Mercado heading the list with 1,075 pounds. (See list of names in “Publications,” XIX, pp. 174–75.)
Antonio Rodrigo Rigio, Abraham Levi Regio, Lewis Dias, Isaac Jerajo Coutinho, Abraham Pereira, David Baruch Louzada and other Hebrews who were made free denizens by His Majesty’s letters patent, petitioned in 1669 about the refusal to accept the testimony of Jews in the courts of the colony. The governor, in forwarding the petition, says, that “they had not been exposed to any other injuries in their trade or otherwise.” But the privilege granted was only for cases “relating to trade and dealing.” Special taxes continued to be imposed at various times until 1761, when all additional burdens were lifted, and afterward the Jews were rated and paid taxes on the same scale as other inhabitants. All political disabilities were removed by act of the local government in 1802, and by act of Parliament in 1820.
The number of Jews in Barbadoes was never as large as that of Surinam. In 1681 the total Jewish population of the island was 260. They went on increasing slowly, the great majority living in Bridgetown (where the first Synagogue was erected, probably prior to 1679) and a small number in Speightstown. In 1792, at the beginning of the period of the greatest prosperity of the community, the congregation of Bridgetown had 147 members, and 17 pensioners were supported. The name of the congregation was “Kehol Kodesh Nidhe Israel,” and its ministers were all selected by the vestry of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London.
The decline of the Jewish community of Barbadoes dates from the great hurricane in 1831 which devastated the island, and also destroyed the Synagogue. Though a new edifice was erected and dedicated in 1833, and even a religious school was established several years later, the members kept on leaving the island for the United States, most of them going to Philadelphia. In 1848 there were only 71 Jews left. In 1873, those remaining petitioned for relief from taxation of property held by the congregation. The census of 1882 showed 21 Jews, and the number was still smaller at the end of the nineteenth century.
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When England conquered the largest of its West Indian possessions, the island of Jamaica, in 1655, a considerable number of Jews, known as “Portugals,” were living there. They dared not profess Judaism openly, or organize themselves into a congregation; but they were less in danger on account of their faith than in any other Spanish colony. The proprietary rights of the island was vested in the family of Columbus until about 1576, when it passed to the female Braganza line, and these exclusive rights exempted the island from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and prevented it from being included in the bishopric of Cuba. The British were careful to distinguish between the Portuguese Jews and the Spaniards, with the result that the Jews at once began to establish and develop the commercial prosperity of the colony. Sir Thomas Lynch, governor of Jamaica, writing in March, 1672, to the Council for Trade and Transportation, mentions, as points in favor of the Jews that “they have great stocks, no people, and aversions to the French and Spaniards.”
Several years before that time Jacob Joshua Bueno Enriques, a resident of Jamaica for two years, petitioned the King for permission to work a copper mine, and that he and his brothers, Josef and Moise, “may use their own laws and hold Synagogues.” In 1668 Solomon Gabay Faro and David Gomez Henriques were recommended by the King to the governor to remain and trade in Jamaica as long as they behaved well and fairly. There were considerable increases by arrivals from Brazil, later from the withdrawal of the British from Surinam, by direct immigration from England and even from Germany. But there must have been also considerable emigration of Jews, for at the end of the seventeenth century the number of Jews in Jamaica is figured at eighty. While the inclusion of Hebrew in the curriculum of the free school which was established in the Parish of St. Andrews in 1693—the earliest known instance of the teaching of Hebrew in an English settlement in the New World—may be taken as a concession to the Jewish inhabitants, there was no lack of harsh and galling measures. In 1703 the Jews were prohibited, under penalty of five hundred pounds, from holding Christian servants. In 1711 they were prohibited, along with mulattoes, Indians and negroes, from being employed as clerks in any of the judicial or other offices.
The struggle of the Jews of Jamaica against heavy taxation forms an interesting chapter in their history at the beginning of the eighteenth century. (See “Publications” II, p. 165 ff.) In 1700 a memorial was presented to Sir William Beeston, Governor-in-Chief of the Island of Jamaica, against the excessive special taxation of four assemblies, and against “being forced to bear arms on our Sabbath and holy days ... without any necessity or urgent occasion (which is quite contrary to our religion, unless in case of necessity, when an enemy is in sight or apprehension of being near us).” The reply by the governor and council begins with the admission of the truth of the statement about taxation; but a counter-claim is advanced that “their first introduction into this island was on the condition that they should settle and plant, which they do not, there being but one considerable and two or three small settlements of the Jews in all the island. But their employment is generally keeping of shops and merchandise, by the first of which they have engrossed that employment, and by their parsimonious living (which I do not charge as a fault in them) they have thereby means of underselling the English; that they cannot, many in them, follow that employment, nor can they in reason put their children to the Jews to be trained up in that profession, by which the English nation think they suffer much, both in their own advantages and what may be made to their children hereafter.”
The governor then proceeds to explain that the Jews themselves requested that “they might on any occasion be taxed by the lump,” and that because of their controlling of trade, especially of the retail trade, the Assembly have thought it but just that they should pay something in proportion more than the