Edmund Burke’s rebuke of Sir George Rodney

Ronald Hurst, The Golden Rock
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp037_eustatius.htm

In an earlier post I wrote about how Admiral George Rodney, commander of the British fleet in the Caribbean, harassed the Jewish community of St. Eustatius.


The great Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, is known for his eloquent speeches in Parliament defending often unpopular causes in England such as respect for the American colonists, Catholic emancipation in Ireland, repeal of the Catholic penal laws and of the death penalty, and constitutional limits on the powers of the king. Burke also condemned the French revolution for going too far in trying to eradicate the foundational institutions of society such as the church, the monarchy, the rule of law, and cultural traditions.

Burke’s penchant for speaking on behalf of the underdog may be why he felt compelled to speak out against Admiral George Rodney’s treatment of the Jews in St. Eustatius and demand a Parliamentary inquiry into the matter on May 14, 1781. Burke is quoted as saying:


The persecution was begun with the people, whom of all others it ought to be the care and the wish of humane nations to protect, the Jews. Having no fixed settlement in any part of the world, no kingdom nor country in which they have a government, a community, and a system of laws, they are thrown upon the benevolence of nations, and claim protection and civility from their weakness, as well as from their utility. They were a people, who, by shunning the profession of any, could give no well-founded jealousy to any state.

If they have contracted some vices, they are such as naturally arise from their dispersed, wandering, and proscribed state. It was an observation as old as Homer, and confirmed by the experience of all ages, that in a state of servitude the human mind loses half its value. From the east to the west, from one end of the world to the other, they are scattered and connected; the links of communication in the mercantile chain, or, to borrow a phrase from electricity, the conductors by which credit was transmitted through the world. 

Their abandoned state and their defenseless situation call most forcibly for the protection of civilized nations. If Dutchmen are injured and attacked, the Dutch have a nation, a government, and armies to redress or avenge their cause. If Britons are injured, Britons have armies and laws, the laws of nations (or at least they once had the laws of nations) to fly to for protection and justice. But the Jews have no such power, and no such friend to depend on. Humanity then must become their protector and ally. (The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 1900, Oxford University Press)

However, in a second speech on December 4, 1781, in response to Admiral Rodney’s and General Vaughn’s defense of their conduct on St. Eustatius, Edmund Burke took a different tact, accusing the two commanders directly of causing the surrender of General Cornwallis to the Americans in Yorktown because they’d neglected to intercept the French fleet whilst occupied with plundering St. Eustatius. In this second speech, Edmund Burke again referred to the “poor Jews of St. Eustatius” but focused his words on a particular individual, Mr. Hoheb, who’d endured great financial hardship as a result of his property being confiscated by Admiral Rodney in the name of the crown. 

A Parliamentary recorder wrote of Burke, “Here the character of England he said was at stake and he implored gentlemen to have pity on their country though they should have none on the poor Jew.”

Thus it seems that by December, ten months after the plundering of St. Eustatius and just weeks after the island had been taken over by French forces, Burke had tempered his indignation at the plight of the nation-less Jews. He made the comparison of Mr. Hoheb to the Biblical Jew who is set upon by robbers and attended by the ‘Good Samaritan’ and urged Parliament to act as a Good Samaritan to the Jews of St. Eustatius who had petitioned England for a return of their property or some kind of recompense for what was taken from them by Admiral Rodney.

Thus, for all of Edmund Burke’s impassioned words on behalf of the Jews of St. Eustatius, their treatment at the hands of the British military was not a real concern, but a suitably pathetic prop against which the moral character of the English Empire could be judged. 

Intertwining Legacies: A Holocaust Survivor and a Tuskegee Airman

Me and artist, Fred Terna, who turns 90 this October.
I'm jealous because he's the better-looking one between us.
Thanks to Krista Hegburg for graciously taking the photo.

Last evening I had the great fortune to attend a discussion between Holocaust survivor and artist, Mr. Fred Terna, and Dr. Eugene J. Richardson, a former Tuskegee Airman. The discussion was mediated by Ms. Krista Hegburg, Program Officer at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum and sponsored by various organizations both at the University of Mississippi and nationally, including the Critical Race Studies Group the Association for Jewish Studies.

Dr. Richardson urged those of us in the audience to study history (as I and some of my university colleagues silently cheered him on) as a way to truly understand where we've all been and how we got to this point. He particularly encouraged the students in the audience to seek out history that is not yet, but should be, mainstream. He spoke of the many inventions and military achievements of Black Americans even as they were enslaved. Dr. Richardson urged us to hold up history as a shield against the onslaught of negative images of Black persons in America. He spoke of hidden histories and those words spoke to me because that is exactly the kind of history I write about in my historical novels.

Something Dr. Richardson said that I won't soon forget is how when health care workers train, they

Eugene J. Richardson
WWII pilot

don't study how to treat blacks and whites as distinct beings. Students in medical school study humans. They do this because medical science has recognized that humans are all the same underneath the skin. He asked us to consider why it is we can't all be like medical students in our approach to others.

Dr. Richardson also spoke of how he and his fellow airmen put their lives on the line for years protecting white bomb crews in WWII, only to return to a country that wouldn't even allow them to disembark from the same gangplank as the white soldiers. And yet, when asked by a student in the audience if he'd been angry about the situation back in the U.S., Dr. Richardson replied that hate is a destructive emotion and we don't often make good decisions when we're hating.

While Dr. Richardson inspired me to carry on as a teacher and as a writer, Mr. Terna inspired me to build a community in which we all take care of each other. He spoke of how survival in Nazi concentration camps depended on each prisoner accepting the duty he had to his fellow prisoners, but also to those on the outside. When asked by a student, "If you could have escaped, what would you have done?" Mr. Terna replied that he would not have tried to escape. First, he said, his family was being watched by the S.S. If he had tried to escape, they would have been shot to death in retaliation. Second, he said that any act of disobedience by a prisoner would bring down an exaggerated response by the guards that affected all of the prisoners. He told the story of how when one prisoner was accused of stealing something minor from a German guard, such as a piece of bread, ten prisoners were randomly chosen and shot in retaliation. Escape was not a personal matter. Escape meant living with the knowledge that you would cause great harm, death even, to your fellow man. This story, more than anything else Mr. Terna said, affected me greatly.

We can be selfish or we can recognize that we are in this life together and need to help each other. Fred Terna had more than one opportunity to escape. But he didn't take them because he felt a duty to his fellow prisoners, his family, and his fellow man.

Let me explain that last bit. How did Fred Terna not trying to escape help his fellow man? He told us that he was the only member of his extended family to survive the Holocaust. Then he told us that he was the only member of one particular concentration camp to survive. "I am a survivor," he said. "I have an obligation to speak on behalf of those who did not survive."

Escape from the camps would have meant certain death. "Where could I go?" Mr. Terna asked the audience. Escape is not the same as survival.

At the close of his talk, Mr. Terna asked those of us in the audience to tell our children and grandchildren that we'd met a Holocaust survivor. This was very important to Mr. Terna. He mentioned it twice and posed for dozens of photos with audience members afterwards so that they could testify to having met him and hearing his story.

As soon as I came home from the event, I showed each of my children the photo of me with Fred Terna. Both of them were amazed, thinking that there couldn't possibly be any Holocaust survivors left alive. Mr. Terna will turn 90 this year and Dr. Richardson will celebrate his 87th birthday in September of this year. I am amazed at these two men. I don't even expect to live into my 80s, much less be engaged in public speaking engagements at that age. We all owe such a debt of gratitude to these men for sacrificing the comfort of their retirement years to travel around the country speaking about their experiences.

I'm posting this photo of me with Fred Terna as a way to shout from the blogtop his message of communal responsibility and Dr. Richardson's message of remembering our history. Thank you to both men for enduring, bearing witness, and inspiring younger generations to be brave and to embrace diversity for the good of all people.

The treatment of the Jews by the British occupiers of St. Eustatius in 1781

On February 3, 1781, a British fleet commanded by Admiral George Rodney captured the tiny Caribbean Island of St. Eustatius, a Dutch colony that had been giving aid to American rebels in their revolution against the British Empire.

Rodney looted the homes and warehouses of many of St. Eustatius's merchants, but in particular he singled out the Jewish residents of St. Eustatius as enemies of Britain. Rodney's treatment of the Jews of St. Eustatius was so extreme that reports of their suffering under Rodney became an embarrassment to Parliament in the ensuing months.

Firebrand MP, Edmund Burke, said of the treatment of the Jews of St. Eustatius:

Edmund Burke

A resolution was taken to banish this unhappy people from the island. They suffered in common with the rest of the inhabitants, the loss of their merchandise, their bills, their houses, and their provisions; and after this they were ordered to quit the island; and only one day was given them for preparation ; they petitioned, they remonstrated against so hard a sentence, but in vain ; it was irrevocable. They asked to what part of the world they were to be transported? The answer was that they should not be informed. Must they take their property along with them? No. Must they not then take with them their wives and children? No. The only information they could obtain was, that they must prepare to depart the island the next day; and without their families, the very last comfort of wretchedness; they must appear the next day at an appointed place to embark. The next day they did appear to the number of one hundred and one, the whole that were upon the island. They were confined in a weigh-house, a place, in some respects similar to a turnpike-house, but strongly guarded and orders were given that they should be stripped, and all the linings of their clothes ripped up, that every shilling of money which they might attempt to conceal and carry off should be discovered and taken from them. This order was carried into rigid execution, and money, to the amount of eight thousand pounds, was taken from these poor, miserable outcasts; and thus deprived of the fruits of their assiduity and the comfort of their age, thirty of them were embarked on board the Shrewsbury, and carried to St. Kitt's. The rest, after being confined for three days, unheard of, and unknown, were set at liberty to return to their families, that they might be melancholy spectators of the sale of their own property.

Taken from The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 1900, Oxford University Press

Author's note: A Notable Occupation

Aaron Lopez

Aaron Lopez and Isaac Touro are two figures who epitomize colonial Jewish history in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War. The first was a successful businessman who persevered in his goal to obtain rights of citizenship from a colonial government. However, it was Massachusetts Bay Colony that naturalized Aaron Lopez, not the colony of Rhode Island. During the colonial rebellion and throughout the War of Independence, Aaron Lopez was an ardent patriot, putting his own fortune at risk and eventually bankrupting himself to support the American cause, particularly by providing arms for the American troops.

Isaac Touro, on the other hand, was a loyalist who insisted Britain had proven itself a friend to the Jew while the Americans had not clearly stated how they would, or even if they would, allow Jews to permanently settle in North America. Touro risked his health, his reputation, and even the safety of his family to stay in Newport to protect the synagogue the Jewish community had recently built there. It is because of Isaac Touro’s efforts the synagogue was not damaged during the British occupation of Newport and still stands today.

Touro and Lopez sacrificed
everything they had for the sake of

There are no images of Isaac Touro, but this is the
synagogue in Newport named after him and his children.

Jewish security in a changing political world, though they stood on opposite sides of the conflict. But neither man lived to see that dream realized. Lopez died in 1782 in a freak accident, Touro in 1783 from an illness.

In addition to these two men who seemed so different and yet shared so many characteristics, the Jewish involvement in the Revolutionary War concerns two islands that also seem very different at the outset, but shared many experiences during the war: Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay and St. Eustatius Island in the Caribbean Sea.

The Jews of Newport, on Aquidneck Island, were instrumental in establishing a permanent place for Jews in the North American colonies with the construction of their synagogue in 1763. Newport was one of the busiest ports in the American colonies before 1775, but when the British occupied the island, they destroyed Newport’s vibrant trade. Likewise, St. Eustatius, a Dutch free port, was known as the ‘Golden Rock’ until the British occupied it in 1781. This colony also had a significant Jewish population who built a synagogue there as a testament to their permanent status on the island.

Honen Dalim synagogue, http://www.fotoarchitect.nl/

The Dutch government in St. Eustatius was the first foreign power to formally recognize American sovereignty by saluting a ship bearing American colors. St. Eustatius also was the port from which arms and secret correspondence from Europe made their way to the Continental Congress. However, as with Newport, the British occupation destroyed trade in St. Eustatius. After the war, neither of the Jewish communities of Newport and St. Eustatius recovered, mainly because those who survived moved on to more economically-secure ports.

After a period of disuse, the synagogue in Newport has been restored and revived. Today it is a national historic site as well as an active congregation called Jeshuat Israel. After being burned down in 1781, Honen Dalim synagogue on St. Eustatius was partially repaired. However, when the last Jewish resident of Statia died in 1846, the synagogue fell into ruin. In 2001 St. Eustatius began its Historic Core Restoration Project which will include the restoration of the synagogue to be used as a Jewish museum.

You can read about Aaron Lopez, Isaac Touro, and the British occupation of Newport and St. Eustatius in A Notable Occupation, available on Amazon.com.

Thank you Sue Steinberg

This evening I was so excited to check in on how A Notable Occupation was doing on Amazon and discovered that someone had posted a review of it. Not only was there a review, but it was a 5-star review.

This book was a wonderful story told against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War. It gives a historical account of what this period in time was like for a small group of Jews in two small corners of the world. Add to that a touch of espionage, battle,not to mention love and I could not put it down. There were several moments that would have made for a "happily ever after" ending, but I am so glad the author takes us further on this families journey. I highly recommend this book.

Sue Steinberg, whoever you are, thank you so much for taking the time to read and review A Notable Occupation. An author never knows when putting a book out if anyone is going to like it. Sure, our friends, family, and editors tell us it's good. And though we love how they support us, there is always that seed of doubt. Did they say that to be nice/avoid a confrontation/get paid?

I'm sure there will be readers who don't like the novel and that's fine. Our variety in tastes is what drives such a vast variety of writing styles and topics. That said, I'm so happy YOU liked A Notable Occupation and that you took the time to tell others in such a public way. For the self-published author, reviews from people like you are like manna from heaven.

Thank you, Sue Steinberg!

Historical novelists 4-day book fair

If you love historical fiction, please visit the Historical Book Fair to browse author blogs and learn about their newest offerings.

Here are my 3 offerings for the book fair:

In 1656, a small community of Spanish Catholic merchants lived in London bound by a sacred secret: they were Portuguese Jews. This is the story of one of them, Domingo de Lacerda, who learns early on that survival in seventeenth-century Europe requires both deceit and conformity. But then he meets Lucy, who has secrets of her own and who challenges Domingo to question everything he has been taught to value. The political and spiritual conflicts that characterized the Iberian Inquisition, the English Civil War, and the English Interregnum provide a backdrop against which Domingo must choose between his obligation to the Jewish community that protects him and the Catholic woman who loves him.


Available here on Amazon Kindle for $0.99.

In 1654, the Jews were driven from Brazil by a conquering Portuguese army. A storm brought 23 of them to New Amsterdam. This is the story of one of them, Benjamin Vieira, who works in the fur trade along the North River before being captured by a Mohawk warrior. After a daring escape, he makes his way east to New England where he takes refuge with the powerful Narragansett tribe. Benjamin believes a Jew must make his home wherever he is able. But tribal elders disagree. They contend Benjamin must live among his own people, Jewish merchants who have settled in Newport, Rhode Island. But Benjamin’s life in the colonies is soon threatened by a bloody war between the English colonists and the Native Americans. And Benjamin doesn’t know which side he is on.


Available here on Amazon Kindle for $0.99.

Rachel Meares is unhappily married to a German smuggler, in love with a British physician, and forced to spy for the American rebels by her African slaves, who know too many of her secrets, including how her brother and father are running guns to the Americans from a Dutch island in the Caribbean. There seems to be no escape for Rachel from her marriage or from Newport when the rebel spy blackmailing Rachel decides to take matters into his own hands.


Available here on Amazon Kindle for $2.99

A Notable Occupation: Destination Leicester, Massachusetts

After the British blocked the port of Newport, Rhode Island in 1776, trade there began to dry up. Merchants dependent on the port left for other places to do business. One of the most prominent merchants in Newport at the time, Aaron Lopez, moved his extended family and servants, about 70 people in all, to Leicester, Massachusetts. The Quaker leaders of the town had extended an invitation to Lopez and even allowed him to buy land and open a general store in the town center.

In A Notable Occupation, Rachel joins her sister, Eva Lopez, in Leicester and lives with her there for almost a year. Rachel loves the peaceful town  which was situated on the post road from New York to Boston.

Leicester Academy

Leicester became an important site of hand card production. Hand cards were used to separate wool and later, cotton. When Aaron Lopez was on route back to Newport after the war was over, he died in a freak accident. He'd donated his land and the buildings on it to the town of Leicester that had provided a safe haven for him and his family. This donation became the original site of Leicester Academy, an elite school for young men. Eli Whitney attended Leicester Academy and went on to invent the cotton gin after leaving the school. It is hard to overlook the connection between his time in Leicester and Leicester's hand card industry.

Town marker on an old stone wall at the common green

Leicester's town green,
which contains several historical markers such as those below

Washington passed this way 1 July 1775 on his route to
Cambridge to take command of the Patriot army

This stone also commemorates the descendants of
Thomas Green 1606 of Malden to 1607 early settlers
in Leicester from whom Greenville was named.
They tilled these fields, healed the sick, preached the gospel,
and fought for their country.

Swan Tavern: 1723, an inn for travelers on the post road from Boston to
New York City, where Jacob Rivera used to do trades from
1777-1783, when he returned to Newport.

The view of Swan Tavern from the town green. In it's almost 300 year
history, the building has been an inn, administrative offices for
Becker College, and a private residence.

Marker honoring the men who joined up to defend Massachusetts
against the British threat after word came about the attack on
Lexington and the British movement toward Concord, April 19, 1775.