Read Jewish Pirates Of The Caribbean: How A Generation Of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out An Empire In The New World In Their Quest For Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge (2008)
Jewish Pirates Of The Caribbean: How A Generation Of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out An Empire In The New World In Their Quest For Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
I really wanted to like this book. And, to a certain degree, I did. But I didn't enjoy it. It's interesting, if not entertaining, but it's not a terrifically written assessment of history. My first problem is the title. You pick up a book called Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean and immediately imagine stories of swashbuckling rogues plundering the Spanish Main, swilling rum, and ravaging wenches (or, alternatively, an hysterical and stereotype-laden Mel Brooks movie). Instead, you get the story of The Jewish diaspora in the New World during the Age of Discovery and their (sometime tenuous) links to piracy. Not an uninteresting topic, but far more dry than that tantalizing title promises. I was willing to forgive this fault, at first. After all, it's the publisher that determines the title and it's enough of a hook to get you to take a look at the book. But it's a bit deceitful. While I strained not to judge the book based on the publisher's poor choice of misleading title, I noticed the second problem. This book is poorly sourced. The author relies primarily on two questionable bases: his own connections between other works, often noting that traditional historians have gotten something 'wrong', which while possible and maybe even likely, isn't well-supported in the evidence he presents, and his own research, for which copies of primary documents are on his website. This alone raises a few red flags for anyone accustomed to historical research, but given the extremely specific nature of this book, it's unsurprising that the research available wouldn't be extensive. But then he sources a geocities.com webpage and what he describes as a quasi-Wiki Jewish genealogy/heritage site. This lack of well-defined research wouldn't be much of a problem for most history books attempting to highlight an aspect of history the author feels is under-reported or undervalued. The flaw here is that most of the claims seem tenuous at best. He makes claims that he admits are against the conventional wisdom, provides a very compelling and interesting alternative story, and then fails to provide hard evidence. While it no doubt makes for some intriguing reading, it doesn't really pass the smell test for historical research. The ancient alien nonsense may be funny and entertaining, but that doesn't make it true or the people that actually believe it and less pitiable. There are two additional, less troublesome, concerns with this book. First, he admits his bias only in the epilogue. After 257 pages, we learn the author undertook this research after being funded by a descendant of the main family on which this book focuses. I wouldn't normally have a problem with this, as independent research is the only alternative to academia in such a narrow subject field, but only being told at the end, rather than the beginning, bothers me. Admit your bias up front, explain why you're eager to make these claims, and I'll be more trusting. Instead, all those aforementioned tenuous claims seem even less likely once I find out the real basis behind this book. The last concern is the way this book is laid out. The author throws dates out constantly, which is fine in a history book, but he fails to follow a strong chronological order. To some extent this is excusable, as he focuses on different colonies and nations in different chapters, but he jumps back and forth a little too much to make this book educational. He tells a good story, but the threads of history get a little too tangled to make it easy to learn. Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean had a lot of potential. And despite the misleading title, still could've been a four and maybe even five star book for me. But the problems it has just drag it down. I recommend it for anyone looking to get a different perspective on the Age of Discovery, one told from the less common non-Christian view, but don't expect to learn much and take the author's conclusions with a grain of salt. He may tell a good story, but this isn't as much of a history book as an interesting theory told well. I had always thought that the New World was discovered and settled by Spanish and Portuguese explorers who were devout Catholics, but I learned that Christopher Columbus, possibly a Sephardic Jew and converso (New Christian), set sail for the New World, August 1, 1492 - the last day before all Spanish Jews were to leave the country or be put to death. I also learned that no Catholic Priests were onboard Columbus' three ships. The crews were made up of Sephardic Jews who professed Christianity during the day, but in secret in the evening maintained their Jewish faith and practices. The author suggests that Columbus was looking for land to provide a safe haven for Spanish Jews. This is an amazing history of the Jewish people's role in the building of the Spanish Empire and bringing it down by forming secret alliances with other European powers to protect or ensure the safety of Jews who were living in hiding in the New World.
What do You think about Jewish Pirates Of The Caribbean: How A Generation Of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out An Empire In The New World In Their Quest For Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge (2008)?
Great history, facts of which the vast majority of people are ignorant. Very well written, too.
—sarah
It's interesting. And hard to keep track of the people and places.
—Gassmann
A lot of interesting history that I previously knew nothing about.
—tiffany
just started - interesting Columbus and Jews connections already
—omankeh98
