A celebration will be held for Alan P. Marcus on November 21 to mark the publication of his new book, Portuguese Jews and New Christians in Colonial Brazil, 1500-1822: A New Geography of the Atlantic World.
The diaspora of Portuguese Jews and New Christians, known as Gente da Nação (People of the Nation), is considered the largest European diaspora of the early modern period. Portuguese Jews not only founded the first congregations and synagogues in Brazil (Recife and Olinda), but when they left Brazil they played an imperative role in establishing the first Jewish communities in Suriname, throughout the Caribbean, and in North America.
Drawing on nearly twenty thousand digitized dossiers of the Portuguese Inquisition, this volume offers a comprehensive, critical overview informed by both relatively inaccessible secondary sources and a significant body of primary sources.
Alan P. Marcus is a professor of geography and environmental planning at Towson University. He is the author of Confederate Exodus: Social and Environmental Forces in the Migration of U.S. Southerners to Brazil.