The Harmful Myth that Jews Financed the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Recently, a prominent Rochester School Board member made a statement to a parent group about an important topic. It was a passionate statement, that this person had clearly thought about, and sought to speak about from the heart. In this statement, the writer includes a reference to the “history of the Jewish nation…financing the slave ships to bring Africans into the Americas…”. The fact that this was mentioned as an aside, with no citation, leaves me to conclude that the author believes this assertion to be both true and well known.

I decided it was worth spilling some ink in these troubling times to address this disturbing but persistent falsehood.

“The Jewish nation” did not finance the slave trade. First of all, any time you begin a sentence with a phrase like, “the Jews” (or some iteration thereof) and plan to follow it up with a verb, I urge you to proceed with caution. There just aren’t a lot of sentences like that that end well. Collective action by a racial or ethnic group, especially one without a centralized governing body, is rare. As such, these statements often devolve into stereotypes and worse. But I digress. I am not going to assert that no Jewish person was ever involved in the transatlantic slave trade. I don’t have magic powers to determine the identities of all the people, businesses, and countries from around the world who colluded to perpetrate this industrial scale violation against Black Africans, and people of African descent. That’s not really the point of a phrase like that. The implication of the phrase is that Jews were the main, motivating financiers (because of course Jews = money) behind this historical atrocity. This is simply not true. Horrifyingly, as with many of the modern industrial scale crimes against humanity, the perpetrators kept records. The Dutch West India company, for example, was one of the largest companies involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Their records indicate that 18 of the original stockholders were Jewish, and estimates put the cash value of their investment as high as 1.2% of total investment. The largest single company involved in the transatlantic slave trade, the Royal African Company, despite being headquartered in London where there was a thriving Jewish community, members of whom were involved in finance and investing, had no Jewish investors for over twenty years, until finally in 1691, a single Jewish financier purchased some stock. Furthermore, to the extent that Jewish people were involved in the transatlantic slave trade, it was not only in finance, and not even disproportionately in finance. The fact that only financing is mentioned plays into the stereotype that Jews are always behind the scenes, controlling the money. While the fact that any Jews were involved makes my blood run cold, it can hardly be said to constitute ‘the Jewish nation… financing the slave ships.’ The fact that a 400 year old 1.2% investment from a small number of Dutch Jews results in a person living in Rochester New York today making the blanket assertion that the Jewish nation financed the slave ships, is perplexing.

Why do people think ‘the Jews’ financed the slave trade? Some of the chief proponents of this idea have been Louis Farrakhan and Leonard Jefferies. The Nation of Islam, under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, wrote a pseudo-scholarly book entitled, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” that is devoted to this topic. This book picks sources to show any Jews who were involved in the slave trade, and then carefully doesn’t mention the scale at which these people were involved, which was a tiny fraction of the whole. The book leaves out mention of other groups involved in kidnapping, torturing, selling, and owning Black human beings, including indigenous groups in America, Black African leaders, and other ethnic and racial groups. I do not write this to excuse or minimize any involvement by anyone of any race in this horrific crime. My point is that this book takes one of the worst crimes in human history, and pins it on ‘the Jews’ by virtue of the actions of a tiny minority of people involved. This kind of collective scapegoating is never just or moral. It is hardly surprising however, since Farrakhan is an outspoken antisemite. His list of public anti semitic remarks is too long to list here, but suffice it to say that ‘termites’ are one of the nicer names he has for Jews. Leonard Jefferies was a professor at the City College of New York, who in 1993 gave a now infamous lecture in which he asserted, among other things,  "Everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade." When Jefferies gave a version of this lecture at Harvard, and was questioned by a student regarding historical records that do not show Jewish ownership or control in the companies who engaged in enslaving Black people for profit, he replied that the investments were “secret.” He declined to mention how he was privy to 400 year old Dutch secrets that don’t appear in the written records. Because these allegations align with pre-existing antisemitic tropes about Jews (that Jews are secretly controlling everything), they reinforce what many people already believe. This makes them memorable, and credible to people who are exposed to them. It also means that people are inclined to accept them, regardless of the lack of evidence.

The myth of Jewish control of the slave trade is one of several that foment divide between non-Jewish Black communities, and non-Black Jewish communities. These two communities have historically stood together in the fight for civil rights, but also experienced increasing tension as Jews became coded white in American society, and benefitted from programs and opportunities that excluded Black Americans. The age old antisemitic canard that Jews are the secret powerful elite that rule the world, manifests differently in different times and places. Today, white supremacy is the language we use to describe unjust, unearned power. In this conception then, Jews (being all powerful) must be the agents of white supremacy, and therefore it makes perfect sense that Jews are responsible for white supremacy’s worst crimes, such as the transatlantic slave trade. This is based not on history and facts, but on a story of good vs evil. If you can simplify everything to this binary, then once you identify who the bad guys are (Jews), you can proceed, secure in the knowledge that you are on the side of justice. That is, if your leader has the same enemies as Jesus, you're on the right side. This has the added benefit of requiring you to do no work to understand complicated things, and still be not only correct, but occupy the moral high ground. And since Jews are all powerful, you are by definition “punching up.” This line of thinking is self-reinforcing, proof against all criticisms, and completely reality-free.

It won’t get us anywhere. I began writing this, partly because I’m not sure what to say to someone who wholeheartedly believes ‘the Jews” financed the slave trade. I don’t know if we have a shared frame of reference from which to understand each other. I do not believe this community leader wrote these words with hate. This is simply their understanding of the world. This person lives in a world where an assertion like this makes so much sense, it need not be clarified, or sourced, but can merely be mentioned. What have her relationships to Jewish people been like? I’m not sure if she would welcome this question from me, but I can’t help but wonder. She clearly cares deeply about education, healing, and justice. But how do we find healing and justice when these libels persist in our education?

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/jewsslavesandtheslavetrade.htm#:~:text=In%20the%201650s%2C%20when%20between,funds%20in%20the%20Exchange%20Bank.

[2] https://medium.com/@arielabee/an-open-letter-to-tamika-mallory-81dcaa11e695

[3] https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/march-1995/aha-council-issues-policy-resolution-about-jews-and-the-slave-trade