AHC: Jewish São Tomé e Príncipe

Hmmm, what about the Azores? The Jews of the Azores OTL date from the 19th century, could they arrive in the 15th in this scenario?
In modern times those islands have been counted as an integral part of Portugal itself, rather than just as a colony. I don't know offhand how long that situation has applied for, but if it goes back into the period when Jews were legally banned from Portugual proper then that would obviously restrict the range of possible dates for Jewish settlement there.


I doubt Spain would be able to take São Tomé from Portugal without a fight, and they'd have a hard time winning the fight against the Portuguese navy of the time.
During most of the last quarter of the 16th century and about the first half of the 17th the two countries were in a 'personal union' under the Spanish Hapsburgs, and this was accepted in most if not all of the Portuguese colonies too. The Treaty of Tordesillas meant that Spain couldn't just have the colonies transferred to its own ownership, but a royal decree from the king in his 'King of Portugal' role about the presence and status of those Jews would have been legal enough.
 
Sure! I read somewhere that after Dias crossed the Cape of Good Hope he wanted to carry on all the way to India but the crew didn't feel the same. I can't remember where I read it or if this is trustworthy but in any case the decade-long gap between the trips of Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama shouldn't be a fatality: we can easily imagine an expedition to India being organized in the early 1490s.

Furthermore we can always find ways to delay the expulsion of the Jews. Princess Isabel died in 1498 IOTL. Had she died a little earlier, king Manuel is still likely to marry a Spanish princess and expel the Jews but the process will be delayed.

He'd probably marry Maria of Aragon as in OTL - she was a little young to be married in 1497 or 98, so the expulsion of the Jews would be put off until 1500 or so.

We don't really need such a delay, though - if Dias convinces his crew to go to India, Zanzibar would be in Portuguese hands before the 1497 expulsion. Once da Gama found the India route, Portugal acted very quickly to secure way stations, seizing Zanzibar within six years of his expedition. Assuming a similar timetable after a successful Dias voyage, Zanzibar would become Portuguese in 1494, which would give Jews time to settle there if Manuel adopts a policy of tolerating them in the colonies. As an added bonus, Dias' success would give São Tomé added importance as one of the way stations to India, meaning that Portugal would want to establish a settlement quickly, and might use Jews if (as is likely) there aren't many Portuguese Catholic volunteers.

So a 1488 POD involving Dias' success, with a secondary POD involving an earlier death for Dom João (from a fever brought on by contaminated Indian goods?) might see small but thriving Jewish communities on Cabo Verde, São Tomé, Zanzibar and possibly Madeira early in the 16th century. The Atlantic communities would include agriculturists, craftsmen and merchants, but the one in Zanzibar would be almost entirely mercantile. The Zanzibar Jews could then spread to the cities along the Swahili coast, especially if the Portuguese crown decides to expel them from Zanzibar at some point, and intermarry with the Africans to create a semi-indigenous population similar to the Afro-Arabs of the same region. Now I'm imagining some 19th-century mestizo Jewish landowner-adventurer becoming this timeline's Tippu Tip, and liking the idea much more than I really should.

The Church was extremely active in East Timor and would not have taken kindly to incursions of a non-Christian variety on their designated selections.

And... assuming OTL (you really don't change much outside of Portugal's Jewish policies with something like this), the Javanese are going to put any such community through a meatgrinder in the 70's.

If you change Portugal's Jewish policies, you change the migrations of the Jews, which changes the history of every country in which Jews played a part. Definitely no Spinoza, probably no Rothschild or Mendelsohn either. This is a POD whose effects would be very subtle at first, but by the 20th century the world would be changed out of recognition.

During most of the last quarter of the 16th century and about the first half of the 17th the two countries were in a 'personal union' under the Spanish Hapsburgs, and this was accepted in most if not all of the Portuguese colonies too. The Treaty of Tordesillas meant that Spain couldn't just have the colonies transferred to its own ownership, but a royal decree from the king in his 'King of Portugal' role about the presence and status of those Jews would have been legal enough.

I'd mentioned the personal union myself earlier in this thread, so there's no excuse for me forgetting it now. But if we're messing with the Portuguese royals, the personal union might never happen. Maybe there will be no Sebastian to get himself killed in Morocco, at least without begetting an heir first, or maybe one of the other claimants will win out over Philip of Spain.

Or if the union still happens, Portugal would suddenly inherit all of Spain's enemies as in OTL, and the English and Dutch would start to pick its empire apart. It wouldn't take a very big fleet to grab São Tomé.
 

The Sandman

Banned
Why not start with the Jewish population of Portugal being expelled to Madeira and the Azores along with Cabo Verde and São Tomé? Perhaps have the Canaries also fall to Portugal instead of to Spain, at least initially, and have the Jews used as settlers there too.

Then, once the colonies on Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries are well-established, the Jews are expelled from there too in order to hand Christian settlers a pre-built infrastructure.

São Tomé, Zanzibar and any other Portuguese settlements in the tropical disease zones, however, are allowed to keep their Jews even after the colonies become profitable enough to be worth stealing, mainly because it's seen as a better option than sending a massive number of good Christians off to inevitably die horribly from disease. If or when the Spanish take over, they might become more oppressive, but the same desire to not lose subjects whose welfare they care about when they can keep raking in profits while letting Jews be the ones to die from disease would keep them from outright expelling or murdering the local Jewish populations.
 
Very cool concept! A string of Jewish majority trading posts around the world? Makes an interesting TL idea for sure.
But could it even be stretched as far as a Jewish-majority Macao?


Alternative suggestion: One of the early Portuguese explorers in the Indian Ocean or Pacific is blown off course, discovers Australia, and manages to return successfully. The King of Portugal (and maybe the King of Spain, later on, too) decides to exile the Jews to there, rather than to anywhere more obviously useful... ;)
 
The forced conversion of the Sephardim of Portuguese and Spanish origins was due to to the desire of the Portuguese Monarch to fall on the good graces of the Catholic Monarchs.
Hmmm, what about the Azores? The Jews of the Azores OTL date from the 19th century, could they arrive in the 15th in this scenario?
They only went there after there was religious toleration in Portugal and the Sephardim could return.


The Sephardim community was very significant (if we include those who emigrated and those who stayed behind in the country they loved), and if a legal loophole could be found to allow Jews to settle on some Portuguese colonies without upsetting goood relations with Spain, there would be sufficient voluntary candidates for a significant area, perhaps the ones that ended up emigrating against their will to other more tolerant European nations.
Those colonies would also be strongholds of Portuguese presence.:cool::)
 
But could it even be stretched as far as a Jewish-majority Macao?

From what I understand, the Portuguese in Macao during the 16th and 17th centuries had autonomy but not sovereignty - the settlement was still, strictly speaking, part of China rather than a possession of the Portuguese crown. In a Portuguese overseas empire that is generally more tolerant toward Jews, I could imagine a governor or the merchants' senate deciding that Macao didn't technically belong to the Portuguese crown and that the decree of expulsion was thus inapplicable there.

(Upon further thought, I think we really need to avoid the personal union for this to work. The Portuguese monarchs with their mercantile orientation were much more pragmatic in their attitude toward Jews than the Spanish royals. I can't imagine, say, Philip II accepting a legal dodge like the above, but I could very easily imagine a surviving Aviz dynasty turning a blind eye.)

The forced conversion of the Sephardim of Portuguese and Spanish origins was due to to the desire of the Portuguese Monarch to fall on the good graces of the Catholic Monarchs.

Yes, that's why we've been discussing either a delayed marriage of Manuel I or else an earlier dispersion of Jews to the overseas empire.

The Sephardim community was very significant (if we include those who emigrated and those who stayed behind in the country they loved), and if a legal loophole could be found to allow Jews to settle on some Portuguese colonies without upsetting goood relations with Spain, there would be sufficient voluntary candidates for a significant area, perhaps the ones that ended up emigrating against their will to other more tolerant European nations.

Those colonies would also be strongholds of Portuguese presence.:cool::)

I've done some research into 18th-century legal cases in London which involved Jews. The Sephardic Jewish community, which was a minority at that time, still called themselves Portuguese, even though they had lived in Holland and England for more than 200 years. The same is true of the early Sephardic Jews in America. They had a very powerful attachment to Portugal, and if a way could be found for them to stay in the Portuguese empire, they would.

I think the legal loophole would be something like what has been discussed earlier in this thread - an expulsion decree that included Portugal itself but not the overseas possessions. Possibly this could be put on firmer legal ground by continuing to treat islands like São Tomé as private colonies rather than crown colonies. In OTL, São Tomé was only administered by the Portuguese crown after 1522; in the ATL, it might retain private status and be open to Jewish settlement, as opposed to crown possessions such as the Azores or Brazil which would not be. Cabo Verde and Macao might have similar status, although Zanzibar probably wouldn't, given that it was a military and naval base (although there might be might be private merchants' colonies outside the East African forts.)

I expect that the Jews would become indigenous over time, and that Portuguese-Sephardic culture would sink deep into the soil. And as far as I'm concerned, a world with more Portuguese presence would be a better place, but that's just me.
 
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