ABSTRACT
The history of Jews and antisemitism in Brazil can be divided into well-defined chronological periods, partly related to the history of Brazil, partly related to Jewish history. The Inquisition was an important institution in Brazil’s colonization process and contributed to shaping a society and culture with a foundation of Native American and African slave labor and the forced conversion of non-Catholic peoples. Dutch Jews of Portuguese origin established the first Jewish community in Pernambuco in northeast Brazil in the era of the Dutch occupation and the colonial activities of the Dutch West India Company. Jewish immigrants from Morocco and northern Africa founded a community in Belém, in the Amazon region in the 1830s. The economic development of the Amazon and growing market for its products attracted more immigrants and fostered the establishment of small Jewish settlements at the turn of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
