The Sephardics of Curaçao

Karner, Frances P. The Sephardics of Curaçao: A Study of Socio-Cultural Patterns in Flux, Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp. N.V., 1969.

From the Foreward by H. Hoetink:

- The Sephardic community of Curaçao is one of the oldest of this Caribbean island, until recently, it was also culturally and socially the most homogeneous one. This group - the first members of which settled some three centuries ago - succeeded in achieving an economic position of much more than merely insular proportions; at the same time, it also strongly influenced the social and cultural atmosphere of Curaçao society, and continues to do so. It not only produced merchants and financiers - whose economic and political influence was felt in the whole Caribbean area -, but also theologians, medical doctors, jurists, novelists, social critics and pamphleteers. Especially in the course of the nineteenth century, the Sephardim developed into a Latin-Caribbean cultural aristocracy within the then Dutch colonial setting. In the more recent decades, this group's family structure underwent important changes, while the previously predominant endogamy began to weaken considerably. In this study, Frances P. Karner has subjected these types of change, and their causes, to anthropological analysis.

Interesting footnote from Aviva Ben-Ur. Review of Benjamin, Alan Fredric, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean: Exploring Ethnic Identity on Curacao. H-Atlantic, H-Net Reviews. May, 2006.:

Karner's sample questionnaire did not include references to illegitimate children and her references to Afro-Jewish sexual relations are limited to a single page where she relies on an often highly speculative study by her mentor Hoetink. One scholar who does attempt to investigate this matter historically is Eva Abraham-Van der Mark. She was able to elicit candid responses from both European-origin Jews and Afro-Curaçaoans about extra-marital relations between the groups. For Karner's work see Karner, The Sephardics of Curaçao, pp. 24, 78-81. On Hoetink and Abraham-Van der Mark see Harry Hoetink, Het Patroon van de Oude Curaçaose Samenleving: Een Sociologische Studie (Aruba, Netherlands Antilles: D. J. de Wit, 1958), p. 120; and Eva Abraham-Van der Mark, "Marriage and Concubinage among the Sephardic Merchant Elite of Curaçao," in Women and Change in the Caribbean: A Pan-Caribbean Perspective, ed. Janet Henshall Momsen (London: James Currey, 1993), pp. 38-49.