The Jewish ‘monopoly’ of the slave trade in the early Middle Ages: the origins of an enduring historical motif

ABSTRACT

Phelan examines the evidence to support the claim that the assertion that Jews played a leading role in the slave trade in the period following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire originated with the work of a number of late nineteenth-century historians, particularly Heinrich Graetz and Wilhelm Roscher. He finds prior examples of this historical motif in the work of several earlier historians, and traces its origins back to the Henry Hart Milman’s History of the Jews published in 1829. His article demonstrates that Milman’s work was widely known and used throughout the nineteenth century, and examines the reasons behind the emphasis in his work on the mutual antagonism between Christians and Jews. Phelan then goes on to examine the adoption of this motif by late nineteenth-century Jewish writers, including the historian and folklorist Joseph Jacobs, and its appearance in standard reference works like The Jewish Encyclopaedia. He concludes with some reflections on the reasons for this surprising development, as well as some suggestions about the reasons for the renewed interest in this topic among historians in recent years.

keywords:

• early Middle Ages
• Henry Hart Milman
• historiography
• Jews
• Joseph Jacobs
• slave trade

Notes

1 Michael Toch, ‘Was there a Jewish slave trade (or commercial monopoly) in the early Middle Ages?’, in Stefan Hanß and Juliane Schiel (eds), Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800) (Zurich: Chronos 2014), 421–44 (422).

2 On the development of the discipline of History in nineteenth-century England, see Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986).

3 Simon Goldhill, ‘What has Alexandria to do with Jerusalem? Writing the history of the Jews in the nineteenth century’, Historical Journal, vol. 59, no. 1, 2016, 125–51.

4 Henry Hart Milman, The History of the Jews, 3 vols (London: John Murray 1829). Subsequent references are to this edition unless otherwise stated.

5 The story of the book’s origins is told in Arthur Milman, Henry Hart Milman, D.D.: Dean of St. Paul’s: A Biographical Sketch (London: John Murray 1900), 83–98. The combination of clergyman and historian was not unusual at the time. According to Philippa Levine, 16 per cent of members of ‘English historical, antiquarian and archaeological communities’ during the nineteenth century were professional clergymen: Levine, The Amateur and the Professional, 9.

6 Milman, Henry Hart Milman, 85. The link with the demise of the ‘Family Library’ is made by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley in his obituary notice of Milman: Stanley, ‘The late Dean of St. Paul’s’, Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 19, 1868, 177–87.

7 Dean Stanley described it as ‘the first decisive inroad of German theology into England’ (cited in Milman, Henry Hart Milman, 86). John Rogerson, in contrast, suggests that ‘what is really surprising to the modern reader of The History of the Jews is how traditional it is, and how little it displays any evidence of the influence of German scholarship’; Rogerson argues that the furore generated by the book indicates ‘how sensitive the Church and the general public’ were to any hint of this forbidden knowledge at the time: Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge 1984), 184.

8 Letter to Harness, 16 July 1829, quoted in Milman, Henry Hart Milman, 84–5.

9 Milman, History of the Jews, III, 207–8.

10 Ibid., III, 156. The ‘Basnage’ referred to here is the French Protestant historian Jacques Basnage de Beauval (1653–1723) whose Histoire des Juifs appeared in 1706, and was translated into English in 1708. Milman regards Basnage as ‘untrustworthy’ because of the latter’s clear hostility towards the Catholic Church.

11 Ibid.

12 Izaak Markus Jost, Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer, 9 vols (Berlin: Louis Duien 1820–9), V (1825), 38: ‘Die grossen und allgemeinen Bewegungen der Völker, welche in den nächsten zwei Jahrhunderten (400–600) den Zustand des westlichen Europa ganz und gar änderten, konnten für die Juden nur vortheilhaft sein: sie erleichterten ihnen die Mittel zum Erwerb, sie machten die Juden als die Beförderer des Umsatzes, der den stets vordringenden Eroberern erwünscht sein muss, fast unentbehrlich und gaben ihnen, weil sie eine so weil verbreitete Verbindung hatten, welche eine gemeinschaftliche Hauptsprache erleichterte, fast den ganzen Handel in die Hände. Denn die vorrückenden Völker legten den meisten Werth auf Vertheilung der eroberten Ländereien und Sklaven unter die Krieger.’ Jost’s history has not, as far as I have been able to discover, ever been translated into English. This and all subsequent translations, unless otherwise stated, are by the author.

13 Ibid.: ‘Mitten in den überall herrschenden Unruhen, sieht man Juden hin- und herreisen, sogar Sklaven herumführen und zu Markte bringen, und alle Versuche der Kirche, ihnen diesen wichtigen Handelszweig zu verderben, scheitern.’

14 Ibid., VII (1827), 103.

15 Milman states that he consulted a book which he calls ‘Les Juifs dans le Moyen Age’, by ‘M. Beugnot’ in the 3rd edition of his History of the Jews, 3rd edn, 3 vols (London: John Murray 1863), I, xxxii.

16 Arthur Beugnot, Les Juifs d’occident (Paris: Lachevardière fils 1824), Part Two, 22: ‘La haine des Juifs pour les chrétiens, dans les temps antérieurs au moyen âge, avait sans doute été très-forte, mais elle n’avait pas cependant atteint le degré d’énergie auquel elle s’éleva dans ce temps. La manière dont le Thalmud veut qu’on traite les chrétiens est dure, car il permet qu’on vole leur bien, qu’on les regarde comme des bêtes brutes, qu’on les pousse dans le précipice si on les voit sur le bord, qu’on les tue impunément, et qu’on fasse tous les matins des imprécations contre eux. Je crois qu’un Juif zélé du moyen âge aurait accompli avec joie ces préceptes; et qui eût osé l’en blâmer? Contre tant d’injustices, l’injustice ne sera-t-elle donc pas permise?’

17 Milman, History of the Jews, III, 206.

18 Letter from Mr Magnus to John Murray, 17 March 1834, quoted in Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843, 2 vols (London: John Murray 1891), II, 301.

19 Duncan Forbes, The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1952).

20 Milman and Arnold were part of ‘a club of young Masters of Arts’ who dined together regularly at Oxford: Milman, Henry Hart Milman, 51n.

21 On Jewish emancipation and the debate it prompted, see U. R. Q. Henriques, ‘The Jewish emancipation controversy in nineteenth-century Britain’, Past and Present, no. 40, 1968, 126–46. Henriques sees Arnold’s Erastianism as a kind of rationalization of an underlying antisemitism.

22 Letter from Thomas Arnold to W. W. Hull, 27 April 1836, quoted in Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., 2nd American edn, 2 vols in 1 (New York and Philadelphia: D. and George S. Appleton 1846), 274–5.

23 In his 3rd edition of History of the Jews, published in 1863, Milman acknowledges that the cause of Jewish emancipation has eventually been successful, and pays tribute to the personal qualities of the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, but does not provide any insight into his personal views on this development: Milman, History of the Jews, 3rd edn, III, 423.

24 Joshua Bennett, God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2019), 20; see also James Kirby, Historians and the Church of England: Religion and Historical Scholarship, 1870–1920 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2016), 32–9.

25 Connop Thirlwall, Remains, Literary and Theological of Connop Thirlwall, Late Lord Bishop of St. David’s, ed. J. J. Stewart Perowne, 3 vols (London: Daldy, Isbister & Co. 1878), III, 225. Interestingly, Thirlwall also cites Jost’s Geschichte in this speech to dispute the assertion that Judaism necessarily involves a ‘bitter hostility towards our Saviour’ (III, 216).

26 James A. Huie, The History of the Jews, from the Taking of Jerusalem by Titus to the Present Time (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd 1840), 46.

27 Philip Henry Gosse, The History of the Jews, from the Christian Era to the Dawn of the Reformation (London: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 1851), 299–300 (Gosse cites Huie in his notes).

28 ‘The conversion of the Jews’, Church Quarterly Review, vol. 26, no. 51, 1888, 185–204 (188). Other examples of the recycling of Milman’s work can be seen in Matthew A. Berk, The History of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity to the Present Time (Boston: M. A. Berk 1847); and E. H. Hudson, A History of the Jews in Rome: B.C. 160–A.D. 604 (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1882).

29 G.-B. Depping, Les Juifs dans le moyen âge: essai historique sur leur état civil, commercial et littéraire (Brussels: Wouters et Ce 1844). Depping was in fact German in origin.

30 ‘[L]es juifs spéculant sur tout sans scrupule, et haïssant les chrétiens par principe et par souvenir, ne firent probablement pas difficulté de se faire les fournisseurs des Mores’: Depping, Les Juifs dans le moyen âge, 44.

31 Lady [Katie] Magnus, Outlines of Jewish History, From B.C. 586 to C.E. 1885, 2nd edn revd Michael Friedländer (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1888), 107.

32 Joseph Jacobs (ed.), The Latin phrase at the end of the passage quotes and imaginatively supplements Pope Gregory the Great’s famous observation on seeing English slaves in the market at Rome: ‘These are not Angles but Angels—slaves of the Jews.’

33 Ibid., 51–2; ‘Strongbow’ was the nickname given to Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (1130–76).

34 [Isidore Singer and Joseph Jacobs], ‘Slave-trade’, in The Jewish Encyclopaedia, 12 vols (New York: Funk and Wagnalls 1901–6), XI (1906), 402–3 (402), available at https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13798-slave-trade (viewed 1 March 2024).

35 Ibid.

36 Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart was first published in 11 vols between 1853 and 1876.

37 [Richard Gottheil, Joseph Jacobs, Herman Rosenthal and Friedman Janovsky], ‘Commerce’, in The Jewish Encyclopaedia, IV (1903), 186–93 (190), available at https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5219-discount (viewed 1 March 2024).

38 See Levine, The Amateur and the Professional, 86; and Kirby, Historians and the Church of England, 6.

39 Bennett, God and Progress, 117, 119.

40 Milman was a great admirer of Gibbon’s work, and produced an edition of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the publisher John Murray in 1838–9.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Phelan

Joseph Phelan is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at De Montfort University, Leicester. He is one of the editors of the Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Poems of Robert Browning (6 vols to date). He also edited The Brownings’ Correspondence and an edition of the poems of Arthur Hugh Clough. He is the author of The Nineteenth-Century Sonnet (2005) and The Music of Verse: Metrical Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Poetry (2012), as well as a number of articles on various aspects of nineteenth-century literature and culture. Email: [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9815-1071