The establishment of two communities of Jewish merchants on Senegal's Petite Côte before 1612 is abundantly detailed both in the archives of the Lisbon Inquisition and in the complementary information preserved in the notary records of Amsterdam's Municipal Archives. The subsequent economic transformations that affected commerce at Joal and Porto d'Ale are also illustrated in these records, but the individual itineraries of the men whose early lives took them from Lisbon to Amsterdam and on to Senegal, are often more difficult to trace.

In the following pages, we situate the subsequent evolution of Joal and Porto d'Ale within the broader context of Portuguese trade with the Cape Verde Islands and within Guiné do Cabo Verde, as that evolution relates both to increasing northern European involvement in the Guinea trade and to changing relations with local Senegambian rulers. We also address the rather complex question: What, if any, was the nature of the two communities' involvement in the Atlantic slave trade?

By 1620, several of the early Sephardic merchants on the Petite Côte had returned to Amsterdam. What factors occasioned their decision to leave West Africa? Had they from the beginning envisioned Joal and Porto d'Ale as only temporary homes? The return to the Netherlands leads us to reflect, in the following pages, upon another, closely related question of enduring historical significance: Several of the original Portuguese settlers on the Petite Côte, as well as some of their offspring and accompanying household members, are described as Africans or of mixed origin.