Itinerario Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics
Itinerario http://journals.cambridge.org/ITI Additional services for Itinerario: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics Jessica Roitman Itinerario / Volume 36 / Issue 02 / August 2012, pp 55 90 DOI: 10.1017/S0165115312000575, Published online: Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0165115312000575 How to cite this article: Jessica Roitman (2012). Creating Confusion in the Colonies: Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics. Itinerario, 36, pp 5590 doi:10.1017/S0165115312000575 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ITI, IP address: 132.229.193.5 on 02 Nov 2012 55 Creating Confusion in the Colonies Jews, Citizenship, and the Dutch and British Atlantics JESSICA ROITMAN* 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 or subjects—of the territories in which they lived. Citizenship, in its various forms, was a structural representation of belonging. Moreover, citizenship conferred tangible rights. As such, being a recog- nised citizen (or subject) had not only great symbolic, but also great economic, importance. This recognition of belonging was needed for, among other things, Jewish par- ticipation in the settlement and economic exploitation of the Dutch and British Atlantic overseas’ possessions.
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