Much larger Jewish population in England

The Jews were expelled from England in 1290 by Edward I. This was one of the earliest expulsions of the Jews in Europe, and Jews and weren't legally allowed to live in England again until the 1660s under Cromwell. Between those two periods I read there was essentially no Jewish community in England at all except for an isolated group in Oxford which disappeared in the middle of the 14th century. There were Jewish individuals, but no Jewish community.

About 15 or 16 thousand people were dispossessed and removed by the Edict of Expulsion. The kingdom got a tidy sum of money out of this.

I don't think a PoD within a few years of this time is plausible for political and economic reasons. This is, as I understand it, the culmination of an ongoing period of persecution where the Jews are progressively robbed of all their money and are worth less to tax as a result. Perhaps we would need a long-term thing where England is maybe cut off from the Crusades and religious fervour is weaker. An example of the kind of thing I am imagining is that the kings of England go for a long-term policy of heavy taxation of the Jews and exploit usury to gain an economic advantage.

If we can get a PoD, could many Sephardic Jews, fleeing the aftermath of the Reconquista, or alt-Reconquista, arrive in England? How, more generally, could there be a very many more Jews in England?
 
I don't know if the Christians English would be very welcoming of them! Certainly more than the Spanish, but not by much is my guess.
 
I'm no expert, but I think you're overestimating the wealth of a few thousand Jews if you think that keeping a Jewish community is going to increase England's coffers enough to make a difference...

There's also the fact that, for centuries up until maybe the 17th century, when taxations were levied they were levied to match an intended target sum (which was, incidentally, never reached pretty much), so the presence of a number of Jews aren't really going to change the fact that the Kings will know how much money they are trying to raise from the start...

Also, doesn't the Jews being richer simply mean that other demographics will be collectively poorer to compensate, until the law of distributive wealth?
 
I'm no expert, but I think you're overestimating the wealth of a few thousand Jews if you think that keeping a Jewish community is going to increase England's coffers enough to make a difference...

There's also the fact that, for centuries up until maybe the 17th century, when taxations were levied they were levied to match an intended target sum (which was, incidentally, never reached pretty much), so the presence of a number of Jews aren't really going to change the fact that the Kings will know how much money they are trying to raise from the start...
You're probably right, which means one would need a different historical divergence for this to work... But I don't know what that is, I'm no expert either.
 
I'd think Elizabeth's time is the earliest return you can go for.
Before that you've the strict protestants who are worse than the catholics for religious tolerance then you've Mary with her nutty destroy all non-catholics...
Its only really under Elizabeth that the modern ideas of religious toleration begin to somewhat emerge- catholics were allowed so long as they kept it private and had their first loyalty to England not the pope. With the Jews you don't have the concern of a take over to worry about.

Maybe have the Dutch wars of independance go a lot worse and have a lot of refugees fleeting to England- including a lot of Jews. These few though not enough to make a subtantial long term GDP difference do have enough wealth and connections to make the queen/her council realise it wouldn't be such a bad idea to let them live in London.

Jews wouldn't increase the English GDP much on their own however economics in that period tended not to work that way.
The monarch tended to very much had an income within the domain of mortal men. A one off payment of a few hundred quid could easily make the difference for them. Let alone some regular payments; safely protected from parliament and their selective levying of taxes.
 
I'm no expert, but I think you're overestimating the wealth of a few thousand Jews if you think that keeping a Jewish community is going to increase England's coffers enough to make a difference...

There's also the fact that, for centuries up until maybe the 17th century, when taxations were levied they were levied to match an intended target sum (which was, incidentally, never reached pretty much), so the presence of a number of Jews aren't really going to change the fact that the Kings will know how much money they are trying to raise from the start...

Also, doesn't the Jews being richer simply mean that other demographics will be collectively poorer to compensate, until the law of distributive wealth?
Ummm... I think you are quite wrong here.

Jews were Christendom's bankers (well, them and a few Italian houses). Having a competent banking system allows industrial growth (remember agriculture is an industry). More Jews might aid the growth of the British cloth industry, say, or any trading enteprise that needed capital to grow.

So, having more Jews with a fair bit of money means MORE others with more money, not less.

The Spanish expulsion/persecution of her Jews was an economic idiocy pretty much only matched by France's later expulsion/persecution of her Huguenots.


Even in terms of military might, having a group of rich Jewish financiers that could occasionally be squeezed/held ransom meant that occasional (larger) military adventures were possibly. England might be able to keep and hold Scotland, for instance. (Not that that would necessarily help:))
 
Dathi, my only quibble with your post is your use of the word industrial.

Undoubtedly Jewish capital will eventually aid industrialization, which is still hundreds of years in the future. In the more immediate term, it will strenghten England's trade economy. I would expect England's jewery to more or less be involved in teh same trades as in OTL. Because of this, I would imagine that they would engage in a fare amount of competition, trade, and intermarriage with their coreligionists in the low countries. I think it is probably that this would lead to an English/Jewish merchant family or two whose patronage will probably allow England to enter the Renaissance a decade or two earlier, while giving it a slightly to moderately stronger mercantile economy.
 
Dathi, and then the Spanish followed up their stupidity against the Moriscos, loyal hard-working and prosperous Catholic citizens whose ancestors had converted to Christianity.

Reading Spanish history from the late 16th to late 17th Century...let's just say you want to learn what you're reading was actually written by an anti-Spanish bigot and is not actual history but...:(
 
I love the idea of Anglo-Jewish merchant families. I hope the idea of England holding onto the Jews for economic advantage like ...a group of rich Jewish financiers that could occasionally be squeezed/held ransom meant that occasional (larger) military adventures, thank you Dathi THorfinnsson, could be made to work.
 
If you were to go back to the period of Henry I or William the conquer and have the Jews in England be wards of the state or some type of officials for the crown it might work. One way to help that would to have Edward the Confessor and the church declare that because of some service, insert type here, they would be protected by the crown. This leads to them giving a study income to the Crown itself that would be over and above other funding available to it.
 
If you were to go back to the period of Henry I or William the conquer and have the Jews in England be wards of the state or some type of officials for the crown it might work. One way to help that would to have Edward the Confessor and the church declare that because of some service, insert type here, they would be protected by the crown. This leads to them giving a study income to the Crown itself that would be over and above other funding available to it.

Like the use of Jews as tax collectors in Poland?
 
Not necessarily as tax collectors, maybe as the keepers of the royal purse, crown jewels, and such.

That doesn't really work, if only because you would need far less of an ethnic group to do it.

Also, there's no real historical precedent for a narrow position like that.
 
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