|
A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe
|
Review
Well referenced, with many vignettes that help to paint for the reader a vivid picture of the times.
(Robert Nussenblatt Lettre Sepharade 2004)Samuel Pallache has gone down in history as an honorable figure, a slightly less successful version of Disraeli's Jewish hero Sidonia... This fascinating little book, however, based on research in the Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, and Portuguese archives, reveals a very different sort of man—a ruthless adventurer, whose duplicity was only matched by his audacity.
(Times Literary Supplement 2004)A coherent and revealing picture of [Samuel Pallache's] complex career... Generally judicious in its conclusions and shrewd in its utilization of detail... Along the way, it explores a hitherto unobserved pattern of ties between North African Jews and moriscos active in Christian Europe... A significant contribution to the history of the political information web of early modern Europe and the men behind it.
(American Historical Review 2003)A fascinating account of the way in which a Jewish family survived and flourished while living at the heart of three warring cultures... The book illuminates a little-known side of the 17th-century world.
(Church Times 2005)Fascinating... A valuable snapshot of the 'new world order' of global powers and grand alliances at the time, and the way in which the members of a relatively poor and socially marginalized family managed to play them to their advantage.
(Canadian Journal of History 2008)A significant study which opens a window on a culture that was necessarily often submerged.
(Journal of Jewish Studies )García-Arenal and Wiegers have brought to life not only one Jewish merchant in the age of mercantilism but his entire culture.
(Mediterranean Historical Review )Using a micro-historical approach, Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers reconstruct the complicated life of Samuel Pallache, a 'stateless' Jew of Sephardic origin who used his considerable linguistic talents to become an international arms-dealer, double-agent, merchant, smuggler and spy as he moved regularly between Morocco, Spain, Portugal, England and the Low Countries. Examining both Pallache and his family, Garcia-Arenal and Wiegers address a number of important scholarly issues relating to the role of Sephardic Jews in the early modern Mediterranean world. This is a fascinating book, and the material, much of it drawn from archives in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, including those of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, is new, fresh, and definitely worth reading.
(Richard L. Kagan, The Johns Hopkins University )A fascinating study.
(Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance )Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish
Your Name:
Your Review: Note: HTML is not translated!
Rating: Bad Good
Enter the code in the box below:
