Commerce and connection: Jewish merchants, Philadelphia, and the Atlantic world, 1736-1822

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2016
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University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of Philadelphia’s Jewish commercial community from its emergence in 1736 until 1822. The earliest settlers in this community were well placed to connect London, other Atlantic colonies, and Pennsylvania’s hinterlands through their commercial enterprises. Other Jews soon trickled into the region, and over the course of two generations newcomers and their American-born sons participated in Atlantic and western trade, land speculation, army supply, and corporations aimed at internal development. Events such as the Seven Years’ War, the Imperial Crisis, the American Revolution, and the international wars that followed sometimes facilitated and sometimes impeded their enterprises. Unlike the Sephardi Jews who first settled in the Atlantic world and established other early Jewish communities, these men were almost exclusively Ashkenazim. This dissertation, then, adds to scholarship on so-called “Port Jews,” the Jewish Atlantic World, and Jewish trade networks. It adds portraits of the earliest wave of Ashkenazi migrants who were new to Atlantic world trade. They diligently learned the skills they needed to participate in commerce, establish credit, and build up an expansive network that included both Jewish and non-Jewish colleagues in the Atlantic world. Using correspondence and business accounts, this dissertation examines Jews’ relationships with one another and with non-Jewish colleagues, and it overturns two common assumptions about Jews’ trade networks. First, while ethno-religious bonds and kinship relationships promoted trust, they did not ensure honesty. Merchants never allowed ethno-religious bonds to override their commercial judgment and interests. Inclusion in the region’s Jewish network was not automatic, and it was ever pragmatic. Second, shared economic enterprises brought Jews and non-Jews together in ventures and partnerships that often lasted a long time and could bring mutual success. Still, while they used their economic endeavors and cultural relationships to flourish in the city, most of them also were treated as “citizen others” on the periphery of all citizens. Representations of Jews as “others” influenced non-Jewish contemporaries who conceived of them as different even while they accepted Jews’ participation in economic, political, and social spheres.
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