Jewish Pirates - Fleeing the Inquisition - Extra History - #1

in a cemetery outside kingston lie a group of weathered tombstones these are some of the first european settlers of jamaica key players in the island's history and their tombstones are in hebrew they're part of a generation of spanish and portuguese jews who lived in secret hunted by the inquisition who'd had their bodies broken and their property confiscated by the church and when their homeland expelled them in 1492 they traveled to anywhere that would have them to the netherlands the ottoman empire and even here at the edge of the known world many of these expelled jews were maritime traders skilled in sailing navigating and cartography tools they quickly turned towards serving their new governments wrestling back their stolen fortunes and getting the one thing they desired from spain the most revenge because above the hebrew lettering these tombstones carry another mark the skull and crossbones thanks so much to curiositystream for helping us keep history afloat before we begin our swashbuckling historical tale a quick caveat tracking piracy amongst jewish people expelled from iberia is a fairly new area of study and when rob started researching for this episode he found a bunch of errors being passed around as fact so just a heads up to please be a little careful with what you read in online articles or even books on this topic similarly since this is a new and fairly obscure area it's possible that details might change as other historians further their research but we still felt the topic was worth exploring since it's a unique opportunity to discuss jewish diaspora through a unique and interesting lens so with all that out of the way gather round me hearties and lend me your buccaneers sorry not sorry it's march of 1492 and the newly unified kingdom of spain made two monumental moves the first was to issue the alhambra decree ordering all jewish persons in spanish territory to sell their property settle their affairs and leave they had four months with a final deadline of july 31st the second was to sponsor a voyage of discovery by a genoese mariner by the name of christopher carumbo better known in the english-speaking world as christopher columbus at the time the alhambra decree was considered the more consequential of the two in fact columbus's own diary of the voyage began by noting that he received his orders for the expedition quote in the same month in which their majesties issued the edict that all jews should be driven out of the kingdoms and their territories in an ironic twist columbus's expedition actually left port just days after the expulsion deadline meaning he likely loaded his supplies within sight of the stream of displaced families boarding ships to leave though his fate would be strangely intertwined with theirs and in later years his family's personal rule over jamaica would give jewish refugees a safe harbor beyond the inquisition's reach but taking a step back for a moment we should explore the question why at the cusp of the 16th century did spain and portugal suddenly expel jewish and muslim populations that in the case of the jews had lived there since the roman empire to put it simply there's no actual way to put it simply in fact historians still debate which of the host of reasons played the biggest role and what the crown's motives were but at its most basic it was about the spanish co-monarchs ferdinand and isabella trying to create a sense of national unity through religion see until 1479 what we now know as spain was actually three kingdoms castile aragon and grenada the last of the islamic kingdoms in iberia but then when the heirs of two of those kingdoms ferdinand and isabella married and eventually inherited the separate thrones they dynastically unified the kingdom of spain then in january of 1492 they managed to finally capture grenada and complete the reconquista a multi-decade project of reconquering the islamic kingdoms of iberia but this presented what they saw as a problem due to the long history of iberia their kingdom now contained a large number of jews and muslims people they'd specifically promised not to persecute when they took granada complicating this issue was a large number of jews who had converted to christianity the conversos or new christians many of these were legacies of anti-semitic massacres that swept spain in 1391 when mobs rampaged through jewish communities murdering any who refused to be baptized and forcing two hundred thousand jews to convert leaving only a hundred thousand practicing jews in spain some conversos genuinely considered themselves catholic after a few generations while others identifying as christian still kept ties to the jewish community or cultural practices and a minority became what were called muranos or in modern works crypto jews people who appeared to convert but continued to practice judaism in secret and finally there was also the moriscos or muslim converts now at the beginning of their reign ferdinand and isabella viewed themselves as protectors of the jews pushing forward policies meant to shield them from mobs of catholics whipped up by anti-semitic preachers but their policies amounted to keeping the jews safe by also keeping them separate heavily jewish districts not exclusively jewish before became ghettos with curfews jews were barred from certain trades had to wear visual signifiers of their status and could not hold office over christians the idea was to make life as a jew so difficult they would convert but what really concerned the crown were the conversos the new christians ferdinand and isabella constantly worried that the jews or the crypto jews were in the terms of the time judaizing these new converts causing them to return to their old beliefs though even secure converts were not safe from periodic massacres for example in 1473 a girl of a wealthy converso family disposed of some water out a window and splashed a sculpture of the virgin mary triggering days of rioting and murder despite this many jews and conversos had a thriving middle class and even some served in the court many jews worked in the maritime trade and were well known as navigators and cartographers but eventually this success only brought more jealousy and official scrutiny to inquire into the spiritual health of these conversos in 1478 ferdinand and isabella appealed to pope sixtus iv to open an inquisition a type of temporary trial by questioning body meant to root out heresy and convince those with wayward beliefs to confess and rejoin the church this they thought would stop the mob violence now inquisitions had happened periodically in the middle ages but the spanish inquisition would become something entirely different a permanent bureaucracy that existed for over three centuries essentially operating as a secret police inquisitors would arrive in an area and announce their presence inviting anyone to confess to heretical beliefs or judaizing they'd also collect secret denunciations against members of the community make arrests based on them and hold the accused for months or even years during which time the accused was supported by the revenue of their property which the inquisition also ceased then followed a trial which might involve judicial torture and a sentencing a conviction could mean imprisonment years below deck in a slave galley or participation in an auto defeat a grotesque public execution ritual where the convicted were paraded in ceremonial clothing before in the best case repenting or in the worst case being strangled or burned at the stake in other words jews couldn't win if they were openly jewish they risked being murdered by a mob and if they did convert the inquisition could arrest torture and execute them on the flimsiest of evidence and then in 1492 the grand inquisitor convinced ferdinand that having jewish communities living openly in spain was just too big of a temptation for the conversos so all of the jews and muslims would have to go which circles us back to the alhambra decree four months to either convert or leave spain and the jews leaving would have to sell all of their property but then because it was forbidden to export gold silver horses or arms in these transactions they would have to accept other merchandise or bills of sale that might not be accepted elsewhere many lost everything either from being swindled on their way out or robbed by ship captains lines of weeping families jammed the roads to the ports but where would they even go england and france had already expelled their jews and poland was a perilous voyage away so many rejected by catholic spain turned to the relative tolerance of the ottoman empire the netherlands and as soldiers and settlers at the edge of the spanish empire where these abused disaffected sailors and merchants could live in a measure of safety while turning their skills toward a new goal making the spanish pay so set sail with us next episode where we'll meet the jewish pirates who teamed up with the ottomans to battle spain for control of the mediterranean we'll walk the decks with sin on race or sinon the chief who served as the right-hand man to the infamous corsair barbarossa and meet samuel palachi a rabbi who took to the sea to become a diplomat spy and illustrious pirate till then though see you on the horizon but you know i do think it's time we blow this scene get everybody in their stuff together okay three two one let's jam what the heck am i talking about oh i don't know maybe just a little episode of the nebula original series working titles i crafted about the beauty and effectiveness of the cowboy bebop opening sequence seriously have you seen the opening it's phenomenal i would argue and i do that it might be the finest example of priming your mind for a show in television history now i've been wanting to do a video essay on that series for so long and i'm super excited that nebula helped make my space bounty hunting dreams come true and you can check it out right now over on nebula the by creators for creators platform we became a part of earlier this year and in addition to original content like my aforementioned bebop breakdown and our extra extra history on tipu sultan we've been telling you about you'll find tons of other original content by youtube's other top educational creators folks like league of legal jordan harrod and jacob geller and because our sponsor curiosity stream believes so much in this edutainment ecosystem they've partnered with us at nebula to create a phenomenal two-for-one deal for less than fifteen dollars you get access to both nebula and curiosity stream for an entire year and that's not a trial that's not a sample it's the whole massive catalog of creative content all there at your fingertips and you know one curiosity stream doc i was really enjoying the other day to the surprise of no one who knows me is the secret world of lego that has a ton of info on my favorite secretive toy company that's taken over the world like did you know that the lego minifig population now outnumbers the human population pretty scary but still no bebop sets huh where's my swordfish too lego for shame oh sorry where was i oh yeah best of all when you sign up with our link at curiositystream.com extra credits not only will you get a year of all of this cool content across both platforms for the discounted price of 14.97 but you'll also be directly helping out our channel in the process and that's something our whole crew really appreciates [Music] i don't want to brag but ahmed zion turk alicia bramble casey muscha dominic valenciana gunner clovis kyle murgatroyd and o reals one are fantastic legendary patrons [Music] you

Channel: Extra Credits

Views: 279,443

Rating: 4.8961272 out of 5

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Id: ZDvmzPlmra8

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/nuclearbomb123]

ahoy vey

[u/ToschePowerConverter]

I guess we used pirate ships before we moved on to space lasers.