PINTO, ISAAC DE. Reponse de Mr. J. De Pinto, Aux Observations d'un Homme Impartial

(AMERICANA)

Pierre-Frederic Gosse

The Hague

1776

FIRST EDITION. French. Tailpiece

Szajkowski 1585

Isaac de Pinto (1717-1787), a Dutch Jew of Portuguese descent, an economist and director of the Dutch East India Company, was one of the wealthiest Jews in all Holland. A scholar of the Jewish Enlightenment, de Pinto utilized his combative pen to defend Jewish (- some have suggested, primarily Sephardic-) honor. A profound political economist, his conservative positions led him to oppose popular democracy and thus the American Revolution, and instead, defend the economic rights of the existing Colonial powers, encouraging them to unite to maintain peace and social harmony in opposition to the American rebels. In this work, de Pinto expresses his criticism of the American Revolution. He feared that once independent, the American Colonies would take control of other European colonial possessions in the Americas and thereby control the flow of bullion. Most of all, he considered the American Revolution a revolt against the basic political order. The memoirist of Dutch Jewry, M.H. Gans notes while the rumor that de Pinto was in the pay of the English. See JE, Vol. X, p. 54; EJ, Vol. XIII, cols. 553-4; M.H. Gans, Memorbook (1977) pp. 112-13 De Pinto was “the most important Jewish literary figure who wrote in French before the revolution… he left a considerable body of work and, at least as an economist, he was far ahead of his time.” See A. Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (1968), pp. 142-3, 150-2. See also J. L. Cardoso and A. de Vasconcelos-Nogueira, Isaac de Pinto: An Enlightened Economist and Financier (2005); M.H. Gans, Memorbook (1977), pp.112-113; J.S. Wijler, Isaac de Pinto, sa vie et sa oeuvres (1923)