Isaac de Pinto

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Isaac de Pinto (born April 20, 1717 in Amsterdam , † August 14, 1787 in The Hague ) was a Dutch Jew of Portuguese descent. He appeared as a philosopher, scholar, economist, politician and businessman in a very versatile manner. As a financier, he was also one of the main investors in the Dutch East India Company . He lived in Amsterdam, Paris and London and was in contact with important personalities - u. a. with Voltaire and David Hume - the European Enlightenment.

Act

The house Nieuwe Herengracht No. 99 with the coat of arms of Jacob Texeira de Mattos

He was the son of David de Pinto (1692-1751) and his wife Leah 'Isaac' Levie-Ximenes Belmonte (1688-1740), both married since March 21, 1714. The family had two other sons, Aron (* 1716) and Jacob de Pinto (* 1718). The three brothers were involved in the leadership of the Portuguese Jewish community in The Hague from an early age. Until 1760 they held numerous administrative functions together regularly and alternately.

With his marriage on December 29, 1734, Isaac de Pinto began to lead his independent life. In that year he married Rachel Nunes Henriques (1715–1783), the daughter of a wealthy partner and financier of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) .

In 1739 he was secretary of the informal learned society Société Amicale and not only through this function was in correspondence with foreign authors who frequently visited this society. In 1742 de Pinto gave two speeches to a group of Sephardic scholars.

De Pinto supported William IV of Orange , who was also director of the Dutch East India Company , in the War of the Austrian Succession by providing him with money in 1747 to defend himself against the French at Bergen op Zoom . In return, he endeavored to soften the ban on Jewish traders from selling clothes, pickled cucumbers or fish on the streets.

Of extensive education, he published his first work Reflexoens politicas, tocante a constituica da Nacao judaica, exposicao do estado de suas financas, causas dos atrasos, & desordens que se experimentao & meyos de os prevenir in Amsterdam in 1748. In it he dealt with the increasing poverty among Portuguese Jews and suggested sending the poorest Jews to English or Dutch colonies in America, to Suriname , Curacao , Jamaica or Barbados . As a partner in a colonial trading company active in this region , this was also a useful suggestion for himself. The relief work for the poor in the country would have been relieved and Pinto proposed that a pension fund be set up with these savings. As further reasons for the impoverishment of his community, he cited the increased taxation of Portuguese Jews, bankruptcies of family companies (as a result of decadence), discrimination against Jewish commercial agents, the Anglo-Dutch sea wars , the bankruptcy of various colonial trading companies and the immigration of oriental Jews.

In 1762 he published the Essai sur le Luxe in Amsterdam, a widely recognized reply to Voltaire's attitude towards luxury . In the same year followed Apologie pour la Nation Juive, ou Réflexions Critiques , in which he criticized Voltaire again for accusing the Jewish religion of being backward and for not differentiating enough between the individual Jewish groups. In his reply, Voltaire admitted his own mistakes. Antoine Guenée spread de Pinto's apology in his Lettres de Quelques Juifs Portugais, Allemands et Polonais, à M. de Voltaire . In the run-up to the Peace of Paris , which ended the Seven Years' War overseas, de Pinto was active as a diplomatic mediator on the British side and received a lifelong pension of £ 500 from the British East India Company .

As a result of unsuccessful speculation, de Pinto went bankrupt in 1763 and was forced to sell his house on the Nieuwe Herengracht near the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam with the famous five wall-filling allegorical paintings by Jan Weenix . The family moved to The Hague . In 1768 de Pinto wrote a letter to Diderot about the card game, Du Jeu de Cartes . His Traité de la Circulation et du Crédit followed in Amsterdam in 1771 and was reprinted twice and translated into English and German. Among other things, he put forward the thesis that government debt promotes national wealth, which was rejected by most economists of his time, including Adam Smith . A Précis des Arguments Contre les Matérialistes was published in The Hague in 1774. In 1773 and 1774, Pinto and Diderot met in The Hague.

In 1776 he published his Letters on the American Troubles in London , in which he rejected Benjamin Franklin's idea of ​​the independence of the North American colonies. De Pinto's works have been published in French (Amsterdam, 1777) and German ( Leipzig , 1777). One of the most important personalities with whom de Pinto exchanged views on economics was David Hume .

Works (selection)

Traité de la circulation et du credit , 1771
  • Reflexões políticas tocantes à constituição da nação judaica. (1748)
  • Reponse de Mr. J. de Pinto, aux Observations d'un homme impartial sur sa Lettre à Mr. SB, docteur en médecine à Kingston dans la Jamaïque, au sujet des troubles qui agitent actuellement toute l'Amérique septentrionale. (1776)
  • Précis des arguments contre les materialistes: avec de nouvelles réflexions sur la nature de nos connoissances, l'existence de dieu, l'immatérialité de l'ame. (1775)
  • Traité de la Circulation et du Credit. Marc-Michel Rey (1771)
  • Essai sur le luxe. (1762)

literature

  • Art. In: Biographie universelle 34 (1823), 484–6
  • MB Amzalak : O economista Isaac Pinto , Lisboa 1922.
  • Herbert I. Bloom: The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . Reprinted by Kennicat Press, Port Washington, NY 1969 (first 1937).
  • Miriam Bodian: Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation. Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1997.
  • José Luís Cardoso and António de Vasconcelos Nogueira: Isaac de Pinto (1717–1787) and the Jewish problems: Apologetic letters to Voltaire and Diderot . In: History of European Ideas , Volume 33/4 (2007), pp. 476-487
  • José Luís Cardoso: Isaac de Pinto (1717-1787): An Enlightened Economist and Financier. History of Political Economy, Summer 2005 37 (2): 263-292
  • A. Hertzberg: French Enlightenment and the Jews , Columbia University Press, Philadelphia 1968, sv
  • Jonathan Israel: European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750 . The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, London 1998.
  • Ida JA Nijenhuis: Een joodse 'philosophe'. Isaac de Pinto (1717-1787) en de ontwikkeling van de politieke economie in de Europese Verlichting . Amsterdam 1992.
  • Richard H. Popkin: Hume and Isaac de Pinto . In: Texas Studies in Literature and Language. A Journal of the Humanities 12/33 (1970), pp. 417-430.
  • Richard H. Popkin: Hume and Isaac de Pinto, II. Five new letters . In: William B. Todd (Editor): Hume and the Enlightenment. Essays Presented to Ernest Campbell Mossner , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1974, pp. 99–127.
  • Adam Sutcliffe: Can a Jew Be a Philosophe? Isaac de Pinto, Voltaire, and Jewish Participation in the European Enlightenment, in: Jewish Social Studies NS 6/3 (2000), pp. 31-51.
  • LS Sutherland: The East India Company and the Peace of Paris , in: English historical review 62 (1947), pp. 179-190.
  • JS Wijler: Isaac de Pinto, sa vie et ses oeuvres. [Diss. Amsterdam], CMB Dixon & Co, Apeldoorn 1923.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard H. Popkin: With all flaws. Memories of a Philosophy Historian. Hamburg 2008, p. 44
  2. ↑ José Luís Cardosoa; Antonio de Vasconcelos Nogueira: Isaac de Pinto (1717–1787) and the Jewish problems: Apologetic letters to Voltaire and Diderot. History of European Ideas. Volume 33, Issue 4, December 2007, pp. 476-487
  3. ↑ Family genealogy
  4. ↑ Isaac de Pinto. geneanet.org
  5. ↑ Genealogy of Rachel Nunes Henriques. geneanet.org
  6. ^ The Alvares / Lopes Pinto / de Pinto Family from Medina de Rioseco, Valladolid c.1517
  7. ^ "Pinto". Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901-1906.
  8. ↑ Leon Schwartz: Diderot and the Jews , p. 131. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981, ISBN 0-8386-2377-8 [1]
personal data
SURNAME Pinto, Isaac de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch philosopher, scholar, economist, politician, businessman
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1717
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1787
Place of death The hague