ABSTRACT
Poverty among Jews in the Dutch Republic can indeed be attributed in part to the economic restrictions placed upon them in Amsterdam and other towns and villages. A joint request by the leaders of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi congregations of Amsterdam in the mid-eighteenth century, asking the government of the city to end the ban on guilds, achieved nothing. The guilds had a powerful position in the economic order. The fear of Jewish competition was acute. In 1748 Christian diamond cutters and polishers even made an official request to the city authorities to be allowed to set up a diamond guild and thereby keep Jews out of the sector. The authorities declined to go that far.
