ABSTRACT
How many Jews were living in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? It is not easy to give precise numbers. During the Amsterdam census of 1795, the monitors complained that it was practically impossible to arrive at a precise count of Jews because of overpopulation in the Jewish district. They explained the problem as follows. ‘The crowding in the Jewish quarter is in some places so great that every spot, right up to the attic, is occupied by so many people and the immodesty of many of that nature in such houses was such that none of the district masters has dared to vouch that there might not be several people, children above all, who were overlooked.’
