'A FLOCK OF WOLVES INSTEAD OF SHEEP' The Dutch West India Company, Conflict Resolution, and the Jewish Community of Curaçao in the Eighteenth Century (original) (raw)

governor of the island of Curaçao, to his Jewish colonists in . 1 His pleas came in the midst of a situation of protracted strife amongst the Sephardi community of Curaçao. 2 The Sephardim had split into two factions and were fighting in the streets, obstructing burials, and refusing to circumcise newborn baby boys whose fathers belonged to the other faction. The parnasim were also issuing proclamations of excommunication with abandon, causing a flood of appeals from those excommunicated to come pouring into Governor Faesch's office. The only comfort for Faesch in this sorry situation was that his was not the only Dutch West India Company colony beset by such troubles. In Suriname, the parnasim had excommunicated Isaac Carilho after he joined the opposition to the governor of the colony. Carilho appealed to the States General of Holland and won his case, embarrassing Governor Mauricius and the parnasim, as well as causing some confusion about how much authority the parnasim had in WIC-controlled colonies. 3 These cases illustrate an important and previously overlooked issue: how the WIC administration adjudicated the all too frequent conflicts that arose within the Jewish communities it administered in the Dutch West Indies. In this chapter I will focus on the highly contentious and chaotic situation in the Sephardi community on the island of Curaçao in the mid-eighteenth century. I will argue that the WIC-appointed governor, as the first point of contact with a (supposedly) impartial civil authority, was thrust into an adjudicatory role which he had neither the experience nor the authority to fulfil effectively. The governor of Curaçao was hampered in his ability to control the island's Jewish community by a lack of clear directives from the WIC itself, including on '