I recently watched two online lectures that I recommend highly and, although they were about very different historical topics, they converged on one point that I found particularly interesting.

The first lecture was by Jonathan Sarna, professor emeritus at Brandeis, and its topic was the role played by American Jews in the American Revolution. It is one of what will be almost 30 individual lectures, each by a different scholar or authority, on the relationship between Jews and the United States, and is being organized in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of the country. As a whole, the lectures comprise a credit course for Brandeis students, but is being made available to everyone, either in person or on YouTube. The Sarna lecture, the third in the series, was given on September 1, and can be watched on YouTube.

The second lecture was by Scottish/British scholar William Dalrymple, who focuses on Asian history for the most part, and the subject of this lecture (now about a year old) focused on events in the history of India which were very important for today’s world, but which aren’t taught in western schools and are virtually unknown in the western world, except by scholars of the area. I found that on YouTube as well – I am afraid I could not identify the forum, but the talk was given somewhere in England. I am sure you can find it. One thing you will learn from this talk is the Dalrymple is very, very smart.

Where these two talks came together was on their equally surprising descriptions of the rise and fall of nations and the importance of trade.

Sarna pointed out that, at the time of the American revolution, the small Jewish population of the North American British colonies was concentrated in the port cities of Savannah, Charleston, New York, Newport and Boston, and that this concentration was in part because these communities were highly involved in trade, and particularly trade with various Caribbean islands, where there was a much larger Jewish population at the time. He pointed to Barbados, Jamaica, Curacao (which had the largest Jewish population in the Western Hemisphere and today is home to the oldest synagogue, which is still in use), and Sint Eustatius. This latter island, still a Dutch colony (a “special municipality”), is relatively unknown today, but apparently in the late 18th century was home to over a hundred Jewish-owned business and trading establishments.

This trade was very important to the Jewish communities here and there, but after the Revolution, the trade unexpectedly was forced to stop. This is because the British, although they lost the war to their former colonies in what is now the United States, maintained control over much of the Caribbean and would not allow American ships to trade in the Caribbean. The North American Jewish population wound up having to focus elsewhere, but they had a new nation and in particular a new nation moving westward for their focus, while the Caribbean Jews were, in effect, left in the open sea without a paddle. Once their trade with the United States was cut off, they really had nowhere to go. The Jewish population of the trading islands decreased significantly, and the economy of those island, says Sarna, were destroyed and never, to this day, have fully been able to recover from the American Revolution. I had never thought about this before.

Digression: Although I had never thought about that before, it did remind me of a conversation I had with a Jamaican government official on our trip to Jamaica some years ago. The Jamaican economy is far from strong today, and he told me that things were quite different in the 19??s (I don’t remember the dates) when Jamaica was providing Great Britain with bananas. This was before Jamaica was an independent country, and when it was a British colony. The UK had determined that Jamaica was to be its main colonial banana source, and the thousands of banana plantations across the island prospered. Then, at some time, Britain decided it was no longer going to rely on Jamaica for its bananas, and was no longer going to give preference to its colonies. Bananas would now be sourced on the open market. Immediately, Jamaica lost is main export item and, the official told me, Jamaica’s economy has never recovered. End of digression.

Dalrymple spoke about a very different part of the world and a very different period of time. He first discounted the “Silk Road” (a term he said did not even exit until the 1930s) as the ancient road of commerce between the Far East and the West, saying that lengthy overland commerce through this route did not occur until the Middle Ages. But, he said, there was an enormous amount of trade by sea from the western shore of the Indian subcontinent to the Roman Empire, boosted by regular heavy “trade” winds, which allowed ships to leave India and reach the Red Sea in six weeks. The imports into Rome were “luxury” items, especially silk, cotton, spices, and ivory. And at times it accounted for 25% of the imports of the Roman Empire. The Indian ports, Dalrymple said, were very wealthy, and the trade was constant, and even a question of significant political discussion in the Roman Empire.

But when the Empire fell in the 5th century C.E., the trade with India abruptly stopped. Just like the Jews in the Caribbean, the Indian traders suddenly found themselves without a market, but they were in a somewhat better situation that the Caribbean islanders. They could turn east, toward what is now Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and so forth, and while that market was not as strong as the lost Roman market, it did allow India to keep much of its trade economy going, and allowed Indian culture to spread in a new direction.

So, the lesson? Well, I don’t know if it is a lesson, but these two stories do show the power of trade, how trade can be immediately cut off, and how economies can be destroyed. As our president plays with trade restrictions as if they were his private domain (and maybe they are), it teaches me that we may just be more fragile than we think we are.

There is a lot more of course in each of these presentations. Dalrymple shows how the Indians also influenced the Arabs through trade, and how Arabic numerals are in fact Hindi numerals (as, he says, they are called in Arabic), that the words algebra and algorithim both come from Arabic/Hindi roots, and on and on. Sarna talks about things more widely known, perhaps, at least to me, when he talks about the role Jews played in the American revolution, but he astounded me with his detailed analysis of the correspondence between Newport’s Touro synagogue (the Touros, by the way, were from Barbados) and newly inaugurated President George Washington.

Washington’s letter to the Newport congregation is well known – “the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…..”. It is rightly viewed as a declaration of religious liberty and equality of treatment. But Sarna takes it well beyond that, examining the congregation’s petition to the president, as well as his response, in illuminating detail. You should watch the presentation just for that alone. Sarna is apparently writing a book focusing on these documents.

Questions: (1) will the Democrats win at least one House of Congress in November, or am I safe spending my $5000 (and Edie’s $5000) in advance? (2) will the Nationals lose all of their remaining games? (3) now that the Supreme Court rules this morning that Missouri has to carry out the November primary using its 2022 districts, how will they carry this out?

Any other questions?