Shylock's Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe. By Derek J. Penslar. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Pp. xi, 374. $45.00

Nachum T. Gross

The Journal of Economic History, 2002, vol. 62, issue 2, 600-601

Abstract: This intriguing and well-written book is the fruit of a decade of thorough research and imaginative analysis. It is based on a broad selection of archival material and an impressive number of articles and books, many of them primary sources and recent historical writings. Derek Penslar is a social historian with a pronounced bias for economic thinking and a comparative approach. Two main themes are here interwoven: the first is the economic components of antisemitism, and Jewish intellectual responses to it; the second is the development of behavioral reactions in the public sphere, leading up to Jewish social policy and eventually to social engineering. The book's subject is the period from the mid-1600s to 1933; and as Enlightenment and emancipation have a central role, it concentrates on western and central Europe, especially the German-speaking lands, “where incremental emancipation and powerful antisemitism promoted the development of an unusually rich and complex Jewish economic discourse” (p. 2). The structure is chronological.

Date: 2002
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