Jessica Vance Roitman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1373726 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jessica Vance Roitman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jessica Vance |
| FAMILY NAME | Roitman |
| SIGNATURE | ROITMAN J V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2908-2364 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Portuguese and Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants in the Tobacco Trade: By Yda Schreuder
There are no secrets here: Sex and Scandal in the Streets of Curaçao
This article challenges the assumptions about what spaces were actually private in the late early modern colonial world. Centered on a case of adultery amongst the Sephardic Jewish community of Curaçao in the late eighteenth century, this piece looks at the entangled lives of enslaved people, Dutch colonial officials, free people of color, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Gossip, private information transition, and the architecture and town plan…
Worlds apart: Island identities and colonial configurations in the Dutch Caribbean
Analyses of the Caribbean continue to divide the region based on colonial heritage, which is largely a result of the fact that it primarily consists of small islands. In this article, we demonstrate the inaccuracy of such categorizations on the basis of two sets of arguments. Based on historical as well as contemporary evidence from the Dutch Caribbean, we show that different islands that were artificially united into a single jurisdiction by col…
Politically correct consensus is not for me: An interview with Gert Oostindie
Gert Oostindie (GO), Professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial History at Leiden University and long-time Director of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) retired at the end of 2021. Jessica Vance Roitman (JVR) and Wouter Veenendaal (WV) have worked and published with Oostindie. They sat down with him at his home in Leiden over a bottle of red wine and a fair amount of cheese to ask him questions and to c…
Aviva Ben-Ur, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825
“A mass of mestiezen, castiezen, and mulatten”: Contending with color in the Netherlands Antilles, 1750–1850
This article shows that the boundaries between free people of color and enslaved people were blurry on the Netherlands Antilles from the mid-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This blurriness stemmed from a few factors. One factor was the predominantly urban slavery system, in which enslaved people were hired out to work for others. Urban slavery allowed for a relative degree of liberty for enslaved people to move about the islands,…
Si jamais je prenais du retard ». Lettres de Mathilda Percival émigrée à son mari John
Mathilda Percival, libre de couleur, quitta Saint-Eustache, une petite île sous domination hollandaise, entre fin 1859 et début 1860. Elle s’embarqua pour une nouvelle vie sur l’île de Saint-Thomas, située aux Antilles danoises. Cet article s’appuie sur sept lettres de Mathilda à son mari. Elles font la lumière sur la vie et les difficultés des ouvrières émigrées au xixe siècle aux Caraïbes. Elles montrent que son expérience recoupe celle des emp…
A mass of mestiezen , castiezen , and mulatten ”: Contending with color in the Netherlands Antilles, 1750–1850
This article shows that the boundaries between free people of color and enslaved people were blurry on the Netherlands Antilles from the mid-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This blurriness stemmed from a few factors. One factor was the predominantly urban slavery system, in which enslaved people were hired out to work for others. Urban slavery allowed for a relative degree of liberty for enslaved people to move about the islands,…
The Price You Pay
Planters and colonial officials throughout the Caribbean feared the consequences of emancipation in the nineteenth century, especially after the British abolished slavery in 1834. Concerns were particularly strong among the planters and colonial officials of the Dutch Leeward islands of St. Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius, as their geographical location left them vulnerable to the decisions of neighboring imperial powers. As early as 1825, when …
We Take Care of Our Own: The Origins of Oligarchic Politics in St. Maarten
This paper investigates the origins, development, and consolidation of political oligarchy in the Caribbean island nation of St. Maarten. It investigates why oligarchies develop in small settings despite the democracy-stimulating tendencies of smallness posited by the academic literature. It offers an historical analysis of St. Maarten politics, and investigates how the smallness of St. Maarten has contributed to oligarchies on the island. The ar…
Economics, Empire, Eschatology: The Global Context of Jewish Settlement in the Americas, 1650–70
The Dutch and English offered Spanish and Portuguese Jews inducements such as liberties unheard of in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century in order to lure them to their New World colonies. As compelling as the economic and military rationales for Jewish settlement were, there were also “spiritual” reasons to encourage Jewish settlement – and for Jews, themselves, to venture to the colonies. The mid-seventeenth century was a time of eschatolog…
Land of hope and dreams: Slavery and abolition in the Dutch Leeward islands, 1825–1865
The asymmetry of laws concerning the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves in the Atlantic world in the early-to-mid nineteenth century led to a range of responses on the part of inhabitants of the Dutch Leeward islands of Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin. These ranged from activism, adaptation, accommodation to, as this article highlights, maritime marronage on the part of the enslaved population of these islands. The Dutch Leew…
A war of words: Sephardi merchants, (inter)national incidents, and litigation in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1640
Far from being passive victims of prevailing political winds or unfair and exploitative legal systems, the Sephardim of the early seventeenth century Dutch Republic were active and successful in influencing political and legal decision-making in their favour. Using two examples, this article illustrates how the Portuguese ‘Nation’ took advantage of the political and legal options available to them to safeguard their business interests. The articl…
Being speculative is better than to not do it at all”: An interview with Natalie Zemon Davis
Jessica Roitman and Karwan Fatah-Black meet Natalie Zemon Davis outside the University Library in Leiden for lunch and an interview. Although Davis is eager to study a Sranan-German dictionary she retrieved from the library, the three of them sit down for an engaging conversation on the historian’s craft, its societal relevance and the future of early modern studies
Portuguese Jews, Amerindians, and the Frontiers of Encounter in Colonial Suriname
Oppression, exclusion, and alliance are themes common in frontier zones like Suriname where cultures come into contact, collide, and connect. This article shows how Suriname functioned as a frontier not only between European empires but also between cultures and peoples. The meetings, clashes, and exchanges between Jews and Amerindians are a lens through which to analyze this zone of encounter. This relationship also illustrates the dynamics at p…
Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics
Jews in most of early modern Europe struggled to assert their rights within legal frameworks that presumed them to be intrinsically different—aliens—from the (Christian) population around them no matter where they had been born, how they dressed and behaved, or what language they spoke. This struggle played itself out on various fronts, not the least of which was in the Jewish assertion of the right to become more than aliens—to become citizens o…
Repositioning the Dutch in the Atlantic, 1680–1800
After some decades of historical debate about the early modern Atlantic, it has become a truism that the Atlantic may better be understood as a world of connections rather than as a collection of isolated national sub-empires. Likewise, it is commonly accepted that the study of this interconnected Atlantic world should be interdisciplinary, going beyond traditional economic and political history to include the study of the circulation of people a…
Sephardic journeys: Travel, Place and Conceptions of Identity
This essay will discuss two kinds of journeys—one actual and one metaphorical. The journeys made by Sephardic merchants between Europe, West Africa and the Spanish American colonies will be examined, along with the concept of journeying itself within the context of the early modern world. What will also be discussed is the manner in which two specific Sephardic merchant families originally from Portugal—the Fidalgo and the Gramaxo—acted and react…
A Deus ex Machina Revisited: Atlantic Colonial Trade and European Economic Development
The effects of the expansion of Europe have fascinated historians and economists, as well as the public at large, for centuries. One of the most intriguing and controversial effects of Europe's expansion has been the trade that resulted from this movement out of Europe and into other regions of the world. The role of foreign trade in Europe's economic growth—and especially in its industrialization—has long been hotly contested. This volume has as…
Introduction Colonial Trade and the European Economy
We Take Care of Our Own: The Origins of Oligarchic Politics in St. Maarten
This paper investigates the origins, development, and consolidation of political oligarchy in the Caribbean island nation of St. Maarten. It investigates why oligarchies develop in small settings despite the democracy-stimulating tendencies of smallness posited by the academic literature. It offers an historical analysis of St. Maarten politics, and investigates how the smallness of St. Maarten has contributed to oligarchies on the island. The ar…
Portuguese Jews, Amerindians, and the Frontiers of Encounter in Colonial Suriname
Oppression, exclusion, and alliance are themes common in frontier zones like Suriname where cultures come into contact, collide, and connect. This article shows how Suriname functioned as a frontier not only between European empires but also between cultures and peoples. The meetings, clashes, and exchanges between Jews and Amerindians are a lens through which to analyze this zone of encounter. This relationship also illustrates the dynamics at p…
Land of hope and dreams: Slavery and abolition in the Dutch Leeward islands, 1825–1865
The asymmetry of laws concerning the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves in the Atlantic world in the early-to-mid nineteenth century led to a range of responses on the part of inhabitants of the Dutch Leeward islands of Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin. These ranged from activism, adaptation, accommodation to, as this article highlights, maritime marronage on the part of the enslaved population of these islands. The Dutch Leew…
Being speculative is better than to not do it at all”: An interview with Natalie Zemon Davis
Jessica Roitman and Karwan Fatah-Black meet Natalie Zemon Davis outside the University Library in Leiden for lunch and an interview. Although Davis is eager to study a Sranan-German dictionary she retrieved from the library, the three of them sit down for an engaging conversation on the historian’s craft, its societal relevance and the future of early modern studies
Worlds apart: Island identities and colonial configurations in the Dutch Caribbean
Analyses of the Caribbean continue to divide the region based on colonial heritage, which is largely a result of the fact that it primarily consists of small islands. In this article, we demonstrate the inaccuracy of such categorizations on the basis of two sets of arguments. Based on historical as well as contemporary evidence from the Dutch Caribbean, we show that different islands that were artificially united into a single jurisdiction by col…
A mass of mestiezen , castiezen , and mulatten ”: Contending with color in the Netherlands Antilles, 1750–1850
This article shows that the boundaries between free people of color and enslaved people were blurry on the Netherlands Antilles from the mid-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This blurriness stemmed from a few factors. One factor was the predominantly urban slavery system, in which enslaved people were hired out to work for others. Urban slavery allowed for a relative degree of liberty for enslaved people to move about the islands,…
A war of words: Sephardi merchants, (inter)national incidents, and litigation in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1640
Far from being passive victims of prevailing political winds or unfair and exploitative legal systems, the Sephardim of the early seventeenth century Dutch Republic were active and successful in influencing political and legal decision-making in their favour. Using two examples, this article illustrates how the Portuguese ‘Nation’ took advantage of the political and legal options available to them to safeguard their business interests. The articl…
Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics
Jews in most of early modern Europe struggled to assert their rights within legal frameworks that presumed them to be intrinsically different—aliens—from the (Christian) population around them no matter where they had been born, how they dressed and behaved, or what language they spoke. This struggle played itself out on various fronts, not the least of which was in the Jewish assertion of the right to become more than aliens—to become citizens o…
A Deus ex Machina Revisited: Atlantic Colonial Trade and European Economic Development
The effects of the expansion of Europe have fascinated historians and economists, as well as the public at large, for centuries. One of the most intriguing and controversial effects of Europe's expansion has been the trade that resulted from this movement out of Europe and into other regions of the world. The role of foreign trade in Europe's economic growth—and especially in its industrialization—has long been hotly contested. This volume has as…
Introduction Colonial Trade and the European Economy
Sephardic journeys: Travel, Place and Conceptions of Identity
This essay will discuss two kinds of journeys—one actual and one metaphorical. The journeys made by Sephardic merchants between Europe, West Africa and the Spanish American colonies will be examined, along with the concept of journeying itself within the context of the early modern world. What will also be discussed is the manner in which two specific Sephardic merchant families originally from Portugal—the Fidalgo and the Gramaxo—acted and react…
Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics
Jews in most of early modern Europe struggled to assert their rights within legal frameworks that presumed them to be intrinsically different—aliens—from the (Christian) population around them no matter where they had been born, how they dressed and behaved, or what language they spoke. This struggle played itself out on various fronts, not the least of which was in the Jewish assertion of the right to become more than aliens—to become citizens o…
Repositioning the Dutch in the Atlantic, 1680–1800
After some decades of historical debate about the early modern Atlantic, it has become a truism that the Atlantic may better be understood as a world of connections rather than as a collection of isolated national sub-empires. Likewise, it is commonly accepted that the study of this interconnected Atlantic world should be interdisciplinary, going beyond traditional economic and political history to include the study of the circulation of people a…
Portuguese Jews, Amerindians, and the Frontiers of Encounter in Colonial Suriname
Oppression, exclusion, and alliance are themes common in frontier zones like Suriname where cultures come into contact, collide, and connect. This article shows how Suriname functioned as a frontier not only between European empires but also between cultures and peoples. The meetings, clashes, and exchanges between Jews and Amerindians are a lens through which to analyze this zone of encounter. This relationship also illustrates the dynamics at p…
A war of words: Sephardi merchants, (inter)national incidents, and litigation in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1640
Far from being passive victims of prevailing political winds or unfair and exploitative legal systems, the Sephardim of the early seventeenth century Dutch Republic were active and successful in influencing political and legal decision-making in their favour. Using two examples, this article illustrates how the Portuguese ‘Nation’ took advantage of the political and legal options available to them to safeguard their business interests. The articl…
Being speculative is better than to not do it at all”: An interview with Natalie Zemon Davis
Jessica Roitman and Karwan Fatah-Black meet Natalie Zemon Davis outside the University Library in Leiden for lunch and an interview. Although Davis is eager to study a Sranan-German dictionary she retrieved from the library, the three of them sit down for an engaging conversation on the historian’s craft, its societal relevance and the future of early modern studies
The Price You Pay
Planters and colonial officials throughout the Caribbean feared the consequences of emancipation in the nineteenth century, especially after the British abolished slavery in 1834. Concerns were particularly strong among the planters and colonial officials of the Dutch Leeward islands of St. Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius, as their geographical location left them vulnerable to the decisions of neighboring imperial powers. As early as 1825, when …
We Take Care of Our Own: The Origins of Oligarchic Politics in St. Maarten
This paper investigates the origins, development, and consolidation of political oligarchy in the Caribbean island nation of St. Maarten. It investigates why oligarchies develop in small settings despite the democracy-stimulating tendencies of smallness posited by the academic literature. It offers an historical analysis of St. Maarten politics, and investigates how the smallness of St. Maarten has contributed to oligarchies on the island. The ar…
Economics, Empire, Eschatology: The Global Context of Jewish Settlement in the Americas, 1650–70
The Dutch and English offered Spanish and Portuguese Jews inducements such as liberties unheard of in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century in order to lure them to their New World colonies. As compelling as the economic and military rationales for Jewish settlement were, there were also “spiritual” reasons to encourage Jewish settlement – and for Jews, themselves, to venture to the colonies. The mid-seventeenth century was a time of eschatolog…
Land of hope and dreams: Slavery and abolition in the Dutch Leeward islands, 1825–1865
The asymmetry of laws concerning the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves in the Atlantic world in the early-to-mid nineteenth century led to a range of responses on the part of inhabitants of the Dutch Leeward islands of Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin. These ranged from activism, adaptation, accommodation to, as this article highlights, maritime marronage on the part of the enslaved population of these islands. The Dutch Leew…
A mass of mestiezen , castiezen , and mulatten ”: Contending with color in the Netherlands Antilles, 1750–1850
This article shows that the boundaries between free people of color and enslaved people were blurry on the Netherlands Antilles from the mid-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This blurriness stemmed from a few factors. One factor was the predominantly urban slavery system, in which enslaved people were hired out to work for others. Urban slavery allowed for a relative degree of liberty for enslaved people to move about the islands,…
Si jamais je prenais du retard ». Lettres de Mathilda Percival émigrée à son mari John
Mathilda Percival, libre de couleur, quitta Saint-Eustache, une petite île sous domination hollandaise, entre fin 1859 et début 1860. Elle s’embarqua pour une nouvelle vie sur l’île de Saint-Thomas, située aux Antilles danoises. Cet article s’appuie sur sept lettres de Mathilda à son mari. Elles font la lumière sur la vie et les difficultés des ouvrières émigrées au xixe siècle aux Caraïbes. Elles montrent que son expérience recoupe celle des emp…
“A mass of mestiezen, castiezen, and mulatten”: Contending with color in the Netherlands Antilles, 1750–1850
This article shows that the boundaries between free people of color and enslaved people were blurry on the Netherlands Antilles from the mid-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This blurriness stemmed from a few factors. One factor was the predominantly urban slavery system, in which enslaved people were hired out to work for others. Urban slavery allowed for a relative degree of liberty for enslaved people to move about the islands,…
Aviva Ben-Ur, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825
Worlds apart: Island identities and colonial configurations in the Dutch Caribbean
Analyses of the Caribbean continue to divide the region based on colonial heritage, which is largely a result of the fact that it primarily consists of small islands. In this article, we demonstrate the inaccuracy of such categorizations on the basis of two sets of arguments. Based on historical as well as contemporary evidence from the Dutch Caribbean, we show that different islands that were artificially united into a single jurisdiction by col…
Politically correct consensus is not for me: An interview with Gert Oostindie
Gert Oostindie (GO), Professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial History at Leiden University and long-time Director of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) retired at the end of 2021. Jessica Vance Roitman (JVR) and Wouter Veenendaal (WV) have worked and published with Oostindie. They sat down with him at his home in Leiden over a bottle of red wine and a fair amount of cheese to ask him questions and to c…
There are no secrets here: Sex and Scandal in the Streets of Curaçao
This article challenges the assumptions about what spaces were actually private in the late early modern colonial world. Centered on a case of adultery amongst the Sephardic Jewish community of Curaçao in the late eighteenth century, this piece looks at the entangled lives of enslaved people, Dutch colonial officials, free people of color, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Gossip, private information transition, and the architecture and town plan…
Portuguese and Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants in the Tobacco Trade: By Yda Schreuder
Political science (15 works) · History (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (11 works) · History (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics (6 works)