Bidspirit auction | (AMERICAN-JUDAICA). (MARTINIQUE). Autograph Letter Signed,

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA). (MARTINIQUE). Autograph Letter Signed, written in Portuguese to Jacob Gubay, Jewish merchant in Martinique (“Martenicas”), from his son in Amsterdam. Confirming safe arrival after a nine-week voyage. One page. Transcription and English translation accompanies the lot . Amsterdam, 23rd October 1664.      A remarkably early letter sent to Martinique, an island located in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea.     Very few pre-1670 letters sent to the West Indies are extant. There was no regular postal service on this route until 1702 following the introduction of Dummer Packet ships making regular voyages.     Thanks to the Sephardim Diaspora, there were strong contacts and a flow of information concerning world markets between the Caribbean and Amsterdam, one of Europe’s most important ports.     In order to escape the Portuguese imposed Inquisition in Brazil, Jews settled French-controlled Martinique in 1654 and soon became the principle merchants controlling trade, especially sugar. France had taken possession of the island from the Dutch in 1635 and came to see this new capital as useful and consequently defended Jewish settlers from Jesuit missionary attack.     Presumably the Gubay family, of the present letter, were one of the Jewish merchant-prince families who traded between Martinique and Amsterdam. See Silvia Marzagalli, Atlantic Trade and Sephardim Merchants in Eighteenth-Century France, in: The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, Edited by Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (2001).