1 On the Livornina charters, see Renzo Toaff, La nazione ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa (1591–1700) (Florence: Olschki, 1990), 41–51 and 419–35 for the text of the 1591 and 1593 charters; Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Trade and Settlement: The Establishment and Early Development of the Jewish Communities in Leghorn and Pisa (1591–1626)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1976), 248–378; Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto. Ebrei a Pisa e Livorno, secoli xvi– xviii (Turin: Silvio Zamorani, 2008). On ghettos in Italy, see Michaël Gasperoni, ed., “Le siècle des ghettos. La marginalisation sociale et spatiale des juifs en Italie au xvii^e siècle,” special issue, Dix-septième siècle 282, no. 1 (2019).

2 Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (Berlin: F. Nicolai, 1781). On Dohm’s treatise, see Robert Liberles, “From Toleration to Verbesserung: German and English Debates on the Jews in the Eighteenth Century,” Central European History 22 (1989): 3–32. On the Metz academy competition, see Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 82–95 and 126–31; Pierre Birnbaum, “Est-il des moyens de rendre les Juifs plus utiles et plus heureux ?” Le concours de l’académie de Metz (1787) (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2017).

3 The bibliography on the debate over Jewish emancipation is enormous. For a recent reinterpretation of the process, see David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

4 Francesca Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 208–38.

5 Isaac Euchel, “Igerot Meshulam ben Uriyah ha-eshtemoi,” Ha-Measef 6 (1770): 171–76 and 245–49.

6 Joseph Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, des gouvernemens, et des mœurs des principaux États de l’Italie (Paris: Buisson, 1793) 3:120–25; the text reflects Gorani’s sojourn in Livorno in 1788.

7 This accusation had particular currency in the late seventeenth century. See The Case of Many Hundreds of Poor English-Captives, in Algier: Together with Some Remedies to Prevent Their Increase, Humbly Represented to Both Houses of Parliament (London: s. n., 1680); Avvisi italiani, ordinarii e straordinarii, dell’anno 1687 (Vienna: Gio. Van Ghelen, 1687), vol. 4, no. 66, August 17; Pauline Rocca and Andrea Addobbati, “Le rachat de l’esclave : les mésaventures livournaises d’un jeune subrécargue durant la guerre anglo-algéroise de 1669–1671,” forthcoming.

8 François Gariel, Les esclaves livournois à Alger. Comédie en deux petits actes… par l’auteur du Dialogue au Caffé du Grec (Livorno: Jean Vincent Falorni, 1786). We discovered the play in the Biblioteca Labronica F. D. Guerrazzi in Livorno, where the only two known extant copies are held today.

9 This interpretation is associated with the “port Jew” model. See David Sorkin, “Port Jews and the Three Regions of Emancipation,” Jewish Culture and History 4 (2001): 31–46. Sorkin has recently nuanced his analysis relative to Livorno: Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, 33.

10 Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, 225–32; Francesca Gavi, “La disputa sull’ingresso del deputato della ‘Nazione’ ebrea nella comunità di Livorno, lettere e meorie,” Nuovi studi livornesi 3 (1995): 251–71; Marcello Verga, “Proprietà e cittadinanza. Ebrei e riforma delle comunità nella Toscana di Pietro Leopoldo,” in La formazione storica della alterità. Studi di storia della tolleranza nell’età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò, vol. 3, Secolo xviii, ed. H. Méchoulan et al. (Florence: Olschki, 2001), 1047–67. On the municipal reforms more generally, see Bernardo Sordi, L’amministrazione illuminata. Riforma delle comunità e progetti di Costituzione nella Toscana leopoldina (Milan: Giuffrè, 1991).

11 See the discussion below.

12 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Gli ebrei, commedia in un atto del Sig. Lessing tradotta dal tedesco in francese e dal francese in italiano [1754], trans. Pietro Miglioresi (Livorno: Gio. Vincenzio Falorni, 1786). The play had been translated into French five years earlier: Lessing, Les Juifs. Comédie en un acte, trans. J. H. E. (Paris: s. n., 1781).

13 Lessing, Gli ebrei, 3–4.

14 In fact, even in 1754 the publication of Lessing’s Die Juden had left a trail of controversy because of its dramaturgical fragility and emancipationist content.

15 Copies of these pamphlets, published in quarto, are preserved in the Biblioteca Labronica. The first is Les Juifs. Dialogue entre M. Jérémie Pouf, et M. Jonas Gay au Caffé du Grec, à l’occasion de la publication de la Comédie des Juifs originairement en allemand par Monsieur Lessing. Traduite en français, et dernièrement en italien (Livorno: Jean Vincent Falorni, 1786). The second is Les esclaves livournois à Alger (see note 8 above).

16 François Gariel, Réflexions sur l’utilité des voyages (Livorno: Carlo Giorgi, 1785), iv.

17 Ibid., 12.

18 Although the name François Gariel (which, as far as we know, may even be a pseudonym) can be clearly associated only with Réflexions, Les Juifs, and Les esclaves, two other pamphlets of doubtful attribution may also be linked to this figure. The first is the anonymous Examen des causes destructives du théâtre de l’Opéra et des moyens qu’on pourroit employer pour le rétablir, ouvrage spéculatif, par un amateur de l’harmonie (Paris: Veuve Duchesne, 1776), a plea to support opera in Paris through public subsidies. A handwritten annotation on the copy held in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris attributes it to a certain “Gariel,” although the Nouveau dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes by Edmond-Denis de Manne (Lyon: N. Scheuring, 1868) lists a “Joseph Gabriel from Bordeaux” as its author. The second is the Remerciement d’un bon piémontais à monsieur *** avocat en parlement de plusieurs académies de France & des Arcades de Rome, auteur de Lettres écrites de Suisse, d’Italie, de Sicile, & de Malthe… Avec la description de la réception des comtes du Nord à Turin, de l’opéra donné à cette occasion, & du séjour & départ de ces princes pour la France (Venice: Valvasense, 1783), a response to Jean-Marie Roland de La Platière’s Lettres (Amsterdam, s. n., 1780) by a “François Gaziel Citoyen de Turin.” The appendix, which concerns operatic performances staged in Turin during the visit of the heir to the Russian throne, Pavel Petrovich, and his wife Maria Feodorovna, resembles the later Réflexions sur l’utilité des voyages, while the main body of the Remerciement, dated “Paris, February 8, 1782,” is similar to Gariel’s Livornese production. The tone of the work, whose frontispiece is inscribed with Horace’s motto Ridendo dicere verum, quid vetat (“A man can speak the truth with a smile”), is satirical; its form is epistolary, and the main text is preceded by a Dialogue entre l’auteur et le colporteur that mocks authors who write “Italian travelogues from their offices.” Its signature, “the Good Piedmontese,” is pseudonymous—perhaps even doubly so. All this, together with the frequent references to the writings of Francesco Algarotti, also cited in the Réflexions, and more generally its literary style, suggests that Gaziel and Gariel may be the same person.

19 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Lessings Werke, 15 vols., vol. 7, Vorreden, ed. Julius Petersen and Waldemar von Olshausen (Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong & Co., 1925–1935), 41.

20 Ritchie Robertson, “‘Dies hohe Lied der Duldung’? The Ambiguities of Toleration in Lessing’s Die Juden and Nathan der Weise,” Modern Language Review 93 (1998): 105–20, here pp. 110–11.

21 So Gariel signs the preface to Les Juifs, 3. His two pieces were published the same year as the translation of Lessing’s play, by the very same publisher: Giovan Vincenzo Falorni. Falorni worked for Marco Coltellini, from whose presses emerged the volumes of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie and the works of Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri. At the end of the 1770s, after starting his own business, he specialized in editions with Hebrew characters: Susanna Corrieri, Il torchio fra “palco” e “tromba.” Uomini e libri a Livorno nel Settecento (Moderna: Mucchi, 2000).

22 Its subtle irony, literary references, and textual allusions are detailed in articles we have published elsewhere: Andrea Addobbati, “Jérémie Pouf e Jonas Gay. Ricerche in corso sulla nazione ebrea di Livorno e la prima traduzione italiana de Gli ebrei di Lessing,” Nuovi studi livornesi 16 (2009): 171–212; Francesca Bregoli, “‘Two Jews Walk into a Coffeehouse’: The ‘Jewish Question,’ Utility, and Political Participation in Late Eighteenth-Century Livorno,” Jewish History 24 (2010): 309–29; Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, 209–22. See also Yaël Ehrenfreud, “Les représentations de personnages juifs au théâtre : tradition française et réception de l’Aufklärung,” Dix-huitième siècle 34 (2002): 479–96.

23 Gariel, Les esclaves. On Orientalism as a stage, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 63 and 67.

24 For a modern analysis of the ambiguity of Lessing’s message of toleration, see Robertson, “‘Dies hohe Lied der Duldung’?”

25 Gariel, Les Juifs, 25.

26 Goldoni used the motto, originally from Pliny’s Natural History (27.9), in Il Moliere (act 3, scene 4) and La conversazione (act 1, scene 7).

27 Lessing, Gli ebrei, 15.

28 For the text of the play and an introduction, see Martial Poirson and Jacqueline Razgonnikoff, eds., Théâtre de Chamfort. La jeune Indienne (1764), Le marchand de Smyrne (1770), Mustapha et Zéangir (1776) (Vijon: Lampsaque, 2009), 122–67.

29 Voltaire, Candide, ou l’optimisme [1759] (Paris: G. Boudet, 1893); Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens, Lettres cabalistiques, ou Correspondance philosophique, historique et critique, entre deux cabalistes, divers esprits élémentaires, & le seigneur Astaroth, 6 vols. (La Haye: Chez Pierre Paupie, 1737–1741). The work was reissued several times, in 1754, 1766, and 1769–1770. On the marquis d’Argens, see Newell Richard Bush, The Marquis d’Argens and His Philosophical Correspondence: A Critical Study of d’Argens’ Lettres juives, Lettres cabalistiques, and Lettres chinoises (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1953); Jean-Louis Vissière, ed., Le marquis d’Argens : actes du colloque international de 1988 (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’université de Provence, 1990).

30 Mario Mirri, La lotta politica in Toscana intorno alle “riforme annonarie” (1764–1775) (Pisa: Pacini, 1972).

31 Carlo Fantappiè, Riforme ecclesiastiche e resistenze sociali. La sperimentazione istituzionale nella diocesi di Prato alla fine dell’antico regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986); Diana Toccafondi, “La soppressione leopoldina delle confraternite religiose tra riformismo ecclesiastico e politica sociale,” Archivio storico pratese 61 (1985): 143–72.

32 Maria Ines Aliverti, “Breve storia di un progetto leopoldino (1779–1788),” Quaderni di teatro 3 (1981): 21–33; Antonio Tacchi, “La vita teatrale a Firenze in età leopoldina. Ovvero, tutto sotto controllo,” Medioevo e Rinascimento, n. s. 3 (1992): 361–73; Tacchi, “Della regolata vita teatrale fiorentina” (PhD diss., Università di Firenze, 1994).

33 Ettore Levi Malvano, “Les éditions toscanes de l’Encyclopédie,” Revue de littérature comparée 3 (1923): 228–45; Carlo Mangio, “Censura granducale, potere ecclesiastico ed editoria in Toscana. L’edizione livornese dell’Encyclopédie,” Studi settecenteschi 16 (1996): 201–19.

34 Pier Gaetano Bicchierai, La Virginia e la Cleone (Florence: Stecchi & Pagani, 1767).

35 Stefano Mazzoni, “Il teatro degli Avvalorati,” in La fabbrica del “Goldoni.” Architettura e cultura teatrale a Livorno (1658–1847), ed. Duccio Filippi (Venice: Marsilio, 1989), 91–106; Elvira Garbero Zorzi and Luigi Zangheri, eds., I teatri storici della Toscana. Grosseto, Livorno e provincie (Florence: Giunta regionale toscana, 1990), 199–247; Vivien Alexandra Hewitt, “I teatri di Livorno tra Illuminismo e Risorgimento. L’imprenditoria teatrale a Livorno dal 1782 al 1848,” Quaderni della Labronica 59 (1995): 13–15.

36 Archivo di Stato di Livorno (hereafter “ASLi”), Comunità, 183, fols. 543 sq. On Jacob Aghib and his memorable marriage, see Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto, 203–204; Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, 15–16. On the Aghib family, originally from Tunis, see Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 61 and 67.

37 ASLi, Governo, 19, no. 1, petition of March 20, 1779, approved on April 17 provided that the old theater was demolished; ASLi, Comunità, 183, fol. 558, “Rappresentanza del S.r Bicchierai relativa al Nuovo Teatro.”

38 Hewitt, “I teatri di Livorno,” 34.

39 Jean-Pierre Filippini, “Livourne et l’Afrique du Nord au xviii^e siècle,” Revue d’histoire maghrébine 7/8 (1977): 125–49; Filippini, “Juifs d’Afrique du Nord à Livourne dans la seconde moitié du xviii^e siècle,” Revue des études juives 141 (1982): 459–60; both now in Filippini, Il porto di Livorno e la Toscana (1676–1814) (Naples: ESI, 1998), 3:49–60 and 61–180. For a contemporary account, see Gorani, Mémoires secrets, 3:120.

40 As well as the references in the previous note, see Jean-Pierre Filippini, “Gli ebrei e le attività economiche nell’area nord africana (xvii–xviii secolo),” Nuovi studi livornesi 7 (1999): 131–49.

41 H. Z. (J. W.) Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 2, From the Ottoman Conquests to the Present Time (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 14–15; Lucette Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism: North Africa before the French Conquest 1790–1830 [1969], trans. Kenneth J. Perkins (New York: Africana, 1977), 61–65; Minna Rozen, “The Leghorn Merchants in Tunis and Their Trade with Marseilles at the End of the 17th Century,” in Les relations intercommunautaires juives en Méditerranée occidentale. xiii^e– xx^e siècles, ed. Jean-Louis Miège (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1984), 51–59; Sadok Boubker, La régence de Tunis au xvii^e siècle. Ses relations commerciales avec les ports de l’Europe méditerranéenne, Marseille et Livourne (Zaghouan: Ceroma, 1987); Richard Ayoun, “Les négociants juifs d’Afrique du Nord et la mer à l’époque moderne,” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 87 (2000): 109–35.

42 Toaff, La nazione ebrea, 415.

43 Filippini, Il porto di Livorno, 3:49 and 65–66.

44 Ibid., 3:67–68.

45 Gabriele Bedarida, “La nazione ebrea di Livorno e i profughi algerini del 1805,” Rivista italiana di studi napoleonici 19 (1982): 115–86, here pp. 122–23.

46 The newspapers of the time highlighted the liberation operation: Gazzetta universale 17 (February 26, 1785), 135; 29 (April 9, 1785), 231; Gazzetta di Parma 9 (March 4, 1785), 72; Diario di Roma, Ordinario 1090 (June 11, 1785), 18–19. On this specific episode, see Andrea Addobbati, “Il prezzo della libertà. Appunti di ricerca sulle assicurazioni contro la cattura,” Nuovi studi livornesi 8 (2000): 95–123. More generally, on the relations between Tuscany and the African Regencies, see Calogero Piazza, Schiavitù e guerra dei Barbareschi. Orientamenti toscani di politica transmarina (1747–1768) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1983).

47 Morton Rosenstock, “The House of Bacri and Busnach: A Chapter from Algeria’s Commercial History,” Jewish Social Studies 14 (1952): 343–64; Françoise Hildesheimer, “Grandeur et décadence de la maison Bacri de Marseille,” Revue des études juives 136 (1977): 389–414; Jean-Pierre Filippini, “Una famiglia ebrea di Livorno tra le ambizioni mercantili e le vicissitudini del mondo mediterraneo. I Coen Bacri,” Ricerche storiche 12 (1982): 287–334, now in Filippini, Il porto di Livorno, 3:181–235; Hirschberg, A History of the Jews, 2:30–51; Julie Kalman, Orientalizing the Jew: Religion, Culture, and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century France (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 91–118.

48 Addobbati, “Il prezzo della libertà,” 99.

49 Roberto G. Salvadori, “Un tumulto xenofobo a Pisa nel 1787,” Bollettino storico pisano 49 (1990): 149–57.

50 On the uses of literature by historians, see Étienne Anheim and Antoine Lilti, introduction to “Savoirs de la littérature,” ed. Étienne Anheim and Antoine Lilti, special issue, Annales HSS 65, no. 2 (2010): 253–60; Francesco Orlando, Gli oggetti desueti nelle immagini della letteratura. Rovine, reliquie, rarità, robaccia, luoghi inabitati e tesori nascosti (Turin: Einaudi, 1993).

51 Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens, Lettres cabalistiques [1737–1738], ed. Jacques Marx (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2017). For an analysis of d’Argens’s relation to Judaism, see Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 209–12.

52 Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, 212.

53 Raïs refers to a Muslim corsair captain. On early modern Mediterranean corsairing, see Wolfgang Kaiser and Guillaume Calafat, “Violence, Protection, and Commerce: Corsairing and Ars Piratica in the Early Modern Mediterranean,” in Persistent Piracy: Maritime Violence and State-Formation in Global Historical Perspective, ed. Stefan Amirell and Leos Müller (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 69–92.

54 This expression referred to ships flying the flag of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, that is, Malta. By the late eighteenth century, the Jerusalem flag was also being flown by non-Maltese captains as a flag of convenience.

55 Gariel, Les esclaves, 7.

56 Le Turc généreux is the first act of Les Indes galantes, ballet héroïque représenté pour la première fois, par l’Académie royale de musique (Paris: De l’imprimerie de Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Ballard, 1735), an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Louis Fuzelier.

57 The positive connotation of the name first appeared in Le Turc généreux, inspired by the historical figure of Topal Osman, an Ottoman grand vizier known for his generosity in dealing with captives. On the other hand, in Voltaire’s most successful drama, Zaïre (1732), Osman was the name of the jealous sultan’s son, who caused the death of the heroine before taking his own life.

58 Gariel, Les esclaves, 8. This statement was not exactly true. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Algiers had signed a peace treaty in 1748, but some Muslim slaves remained in Livorno after that date even though the city’s bagno, where captives had traditionally resided, was indeed closed in 1750. See Cesare Santus, Il “turco” a Livorno. Incontri con l’Islam nella Toscana del Seicento (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2019); Guillaume Calafat and Cesare Santus, “Les avatars du ‘Turc.’ Esclaves et commerçants musulmans à Livourne (1600–1750),” in Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, vol. 1, Une intégration invisible, ed. Jocelyne Dakhlia and Bernard Vincent (Paris: Albin Michel, 2011), 471–522; Giulia Bonazza, Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States, 1750–1850 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 135–40.

59 Gariel, Les esclaves, 8.

60 Ibid., 9.

61 For an overview of France’s relation with Mediterranean slavery, see Gillian Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

62 Ibid., 113–14.

63 Gazzetta universale 91 (November 12, 1785), 721. The entry is dated October 25, 1785.

64 Gariel, Les esclaves, 9.

65 Eloy Martín Corrales, Muslims in Spain, 1492–1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 230–32.

66 Gazzetta universale 65 (August 12, 1785), 513; 70 (August 30, 1785), 553; 75 (September 17, 1785), 594; 81 (October 8, 1785), 641 and 648; 95 (November 26, 1785), 753; 99 (December 10, 1785), 785; 101 (December 17, 1785), 801; 102 (December 20, 1785), 810. The treaty was published in its entirety in the Gazzetta toscana 87 (October 31, 1786), 689–90; 88 (November 4, 1786), 698; 89 (November 7, 1786), 705–706.

67 Gariel, Les esclaves, 10. In a later scene, Osman also refers to the protracted Russo-Turkish war to justify the comically exaggerated six-hundred percent increase in the price of Circassian and Georgian women destined for the sultan’s harem: since Georgia and Circassia were at that time under the protection of Catherine the Great, the “merchandise” had become very rare in Constantinople, where it commanded much higher prices (ibid., 29).

68 The comment is underscored by Abigail’s reaction in the next scene: rejoicing at the news that she will receive “a pretty slave” who will serve her and keep her company, she promises that she will make her forget her captivity (ibid., 13).

69 This praise of Peter Leopold resonates with classic Jewish expressions of gratitude for the good treatment received from particular sovereigns. But in Gariel’s twist, it is an Algerian Jewish merchant who publicly declares his thanks to the ruler of another country, Tuscany, for its treatment of his fellow Jews (ibid., 12).

70 Ibid., 13.

71 Lessing, Gli ebrei, 15.

72 Uncommon in eighteenth-century Italian pamphlets, the stereotype of the greedy Jewish banker circulated widely in anti-Jewish discourse in France and the German lands, where conflicts between Jewish creditors and Christian debtors ran high. On images of the Jewish usurer in early modern and modern Europe, see Francesca Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

73 Samuele Romanelli, Visioni d’Oriente. Itinerari di un ebreo italiano nel Marocco del Settecento, ed. Asher Salah (Florence: Giuntina, 2006); Hayim Yoseph David Azulai, Ma‘agal Tov, ed. Ahron Freiman (Berlin: Mekitze Nirdamim, 1921). See also Matthias B. Lehmann, “A Livornese ‘Port Jew’ and the Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire,” Jewish Social Studies 11 (2005): 51–76, and Lehmann, “Levantinos and Other Jews: Reading H.Y.D. Azulai’s Travel Diary,” Jewish Social Studies 13 (2007): 1–34.

74 Gariel, Les esclaves, 15. The play alludes repeatedly to the possibility of romantic attraction between a Jew and a Christian. In another scene, Bernard expresses admiration for Abigail’s charming spirit, education, and figure (ibid., 17), while Jacob later declares to his father that he does indeed think about Dorothée, but only to honor, respect, and serve her (ibid., 30). Although erotic affairs between Jews and Christians were likely more frequent than we can ascertain from the sources, only the conversion of the Jewish partner to Christianity would have made such relationships officially viable.

75 Ibid., 15.

76 Renée Levine Melammed, “Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin (1991; repr. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 128–49, here p. 130.

77 Poirson and Razgonnikoff, Théâtre de Chamfort, 139–43 and 151–53.

78 Gariel, Les esclaves, 17.

79 Ibid., 18.

80 Ibid., 19.

81 Ibid., 23.

82 Ibid., 24.

83 Justin Roberts, Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750–1807 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013); Silvia Sebastiani, The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender and the Limits of Progress [2008], trans. J. Carden (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013); Jean-Paul Doguet, Les philosophes et l’esclavage (Paris: Éd. Kimé, 2016).

84 Gariel, Les esclaves, 26.

85 On the emergence of this kind of cosmopolitanism, see Margaret Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Sophia Rosenfeld, “Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism, Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” National Identities 4, no. 1 (2002): 25–43.

86 Gariel, Les esclaves, 30.

87 Ibid., 31.

88 Usually, they were skilled seamen, ship workers, and merchants: Khalid Bekkaoui, White Women Captives in North Africa: Narratives of Enslavement, 1735–1830 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 17.

89 Joe Snader, Caught between Worlds: British Captivity Narratives in Fact and Fiction (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 149. The genre of the Mediterranean captivity narrative was extremely popular in England: Daniel J. Vitkus, ed., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Diane Long Hoeveler, “The Female Captivity Narrative: Blood, Water, and Orientalism,” in Interrogating Orientalism: Contextual Approaches and Pedagogical Practices, ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Jeffrey Cass (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006), 46–71, here pp. 51–57. See also Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History (London: HarperPress, 2007).

90 See Voltaire, Candide, ou l’optimisme, chap. 11. “The story of Cunégonde” (chap. 8) is also relevant here: When her parents’ castle is attacked by Bulgarians, Cunégonde, Candide’s beloved, is raped by a “big Bulgar” and falls into a sort of slavery. Eventually, she is sold to Don Issachar, a Sephardic Jewish merchant “who loved women passionately” (ibid., 33 and 34).

91 Gariel was quite aware of the optimistic, sunny take of his play. Discussing the Italian translation of Die Juden, the fictional critics of Les Juifs had compared Lessing’s work with the chiaroscuro technique of classic Dutch painters. While the Dutch masters used strong shadows to emphasize light, Jonas Gay mused, Lessing’s chiaroscuro was a failure: his hand had been too heavy with the shadowing, with the result that the “creative light” was lost (Gariel, Les Juifs, 18). Recalling the remarks of his own characters in the preface to Les esclaves, Gariel anticipated that some critics would say that he had in turn cast his work in a light “so hazy that it does not mean anything.” “And yet,” he added, “it sparkles, which is what people love in the unfortunate century in which we live” (Gariel, Les esclaves, 3).

92 Gariel, Les esclaves, 32.

93 The Roux family played a key role in the distribution of sugar from the Antilles. Georges Roux became known as a laughable braggart after transforming his ships into a corsairing fleet during the Seven Years’ War, and declaring war—as a private citizen—against King George II of England. See Charles Carrière and Michel Goury, Georges Roux, dit de Corse. L’étrange destin d’un armateur marseillais, 1703–1792 (Marseille: Jeanne Lafitte, 1990); Michel Vovelle, The Fall of the French Monarchy 1787–1792 [1972], trans. Susan Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 52. On the Roux brothers firm, see Charles Carrière, Négociants marseillais au xviii^e siècle. Contribution à l’étude des économies maritimes, 2 vols. (Marseille: Institut historique de Provence, 1973); Sébastien Lupo, “Révolution(s) d’échelles. Le marché levantin et la crise du commerce marseillais au miroir des maisons Roux et de leurs relais à Smyrne (1740–1787)” (PhD diss., Aix-Marseille université, 2015); Lupo, “Inertie épistolaire et audace négociante au xviii^e siècle,” Rives nord-méditerranéennes 27 (2007): 109–22.

94 Gariel, Les esclaves, 27.

95 At Sara’s horrified exclamation—“What barbarians!”—Abraham explains that women can be dangerous, as the biblical examples of Judith, Yael, and Delilah show—and small, pretty girls more so than big, vulgar ones (ibid., 34). Abraham’s assessment complements Abigail’s earlier complaints about the female condition in Algiers. One wonders how these comments were perceived in Livorno, where women were free to walk around unsupervised.

96 Ibid., 35–36.

97 Ibid., 40.

98 Kaiser and Calafat, “Violence, Protection, and Commerce,” 78.

99 Wolfgang Kaiser, introduction to Le commerce des captifs. Les intermédiaires dans l’échange et le rachat des prisonniers en Méditerranée, xv^e– xviii^e siècle, ed. Wolfgang Kaiser (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008), 1–14, here p. 5; Wolfgang Kaiser and Guillaume Calafat, “The Economy of Ransoming in the Early Modern Mediterranean: A Form of Cross-Cultural Trade between Southern Europe and the Maghreb (16th to 18th Centuries),” in Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900, ed. Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Catia Antunes (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 108–30, here pp. 125–30.

100 Daniel Hershenzon, “Jews and the Early Modern Mediterranean Slave Trade,” in Jews and the Mediterranean, ed. Matthias Lehmann and Jessica Marglin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 81–106.

101 Filippini, “Una famiglia ebrea di Livorno,” 290. While the origins of the family and its history in the early part of the eighteenth century are still unclear, there is substantial research on its nineteenth-century vicissitudes: M. J. M. Haddey, Le livre d’or des israélites algériens (Algiers: Imprimerie typographique A. Bouyer, 1871), 66–72; Rosenstock, “The House of Bacri and Busnach”; and more recently Kalman, Orientalizing the Jew, 91–118.

102 Gariel, Les esclaves, 44–45.

103 Abigail and Rachel are described as perfect merchant’s daughters: they know everything about running a household, they can read and write, and they know arithmetic, French, Spanish, and dancing (ibid., 42).

104 Ibid., 47–48.

105 Ibid., 3.

106 Ibid., 4.

107 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 195–197v, agreement to take over the contract (August 29, 1789).

108 Berte belonged to a family of French origin, which had settled in Livorno in the second half of the seventeenth century to engage in commerce and had obtained a noble title by acquiring some landed property in the Tuscan countryside that the Medici had enfeoffed. His sister Anna Maria held a very well-attended literary salon in her Pisa home, while his wife Caterina Casimira was the daughter of the rich notary Giovanbattista Gamerra. The marquis was thus the brother-in-law of the famous Giovanni Gamerra, a dramatist and playwright who had little talent but was very prolific and ambitious enough to stand as a candidate to succeed Metastasio at the Viennese court. See Federico Marri, “Lettere di Giovanni de Gamerra,” Studi musicali 29 (2000): 71–184 and 293–452, and 30 (2001): 59–128; on Berte in particular, see ibid., 293–95. On Gamerra, see Franco Tagliafierro, “Giovanni de Gamerra e le sue tragedie ‘domestiche,’” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 171, no. 553 (1994): 183–216.

109 Loredana Maccabruni, “L’Accademia degli Immobili e il teatro della Pergola dai sovrani lorenesi al regno d’Italia,” in Lo “Spettacolo maraviglioso.” Il teatro della Pergola: l’opera a Firenze, ed. Marcello de Angelis et al. (Florence: Polistampa, 2000), 47–59; Sara Mamone, “Accademia e opera in musica nella vita di Giovan Carlo Mattias e Leopoldo de’ Medici, fratelli del granduca Ferdinando,” in “Lo stupor dell’invenzione.” Firenze e la nascita dell’opera, ed. Piero Gargiulo (Florence: Olschki, 2001), 119–38; Caterina Pagnini, Il teatro del Cocomero a Firenze (1701–1748) (Florence: Le Lettere, 2017).

110 Marcello Verga, Da “cittadini” a “nobili.” Lotta politica e riforma delle istituzioni nella Toscana di Francesco Stefano di Lorena (Milan: Giuffrè, 1990). See also Jean Boutier, “Les membres des académies florentines à l’époque moderne. La sociabilité intellectuelle à l’épreuve du statut et des compétences,” in Naples, Rome, Florence. Une histoire comparée des milieux intellectuels italiens ( xvii^e– xviii^e siècles), ed. Jean Boutier, Brigitte Marin, and Antonella Romano (Rome: École française de Rome, 2005), 405–43.

111 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 216–217, report from Aghib, Abudharam, and Attias.

112 Some believed that Bertolla’s wealth derived from a lottery win: Biblioteca Labronica, MS XVI, Pietro Bernardo Prato, “Giornale della città a porto di Livorno,” 1782, pp. 12–13. Others thought he had received, in trust, the treasure of two Jesuits passing through the city: David G. LoRomer, Merchants and Reform in Livorno: 1814–1868 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 66.

113 In the eleven years following the municipality reform, Jacob Aghib was twice a deputy of the nazione ebrea. The others were Lazzaro Recanati, who held the post five times, and David Franco and Jacob Bonfil, who held it twice each. See Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, 312.

114 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 220–221, transfer from Bird to Aghib (December 22, 1789); fols. 222–223, transfer from Bicchierai to Abudharam (January 19, 1790). Francesco was the son of Pietro Gaetano, and owned one box in the theater.

115 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 200–204, “Copia della Deliberazione dei SS.ri Accademici Avvalorati del 2 feb. 1790.”

116 ASLi, Governo, 43, fol. 224, brothers Aghib and brothers Abudharam to Berte (February 16, 1790).

117 ASLi, Governo, 43, fol. 225–225v, Berte to the brothers Aghib and brothers Abudharam (March 11, 1790). The original letters can be found in ASLi, Avvalorati, 1, n. 5.

118 ASLi, Governo, fol. 224, the brothers Aghib and brothers Abudharam to Berte (February 16, 1790).

119 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 208–219, report from Aghib, Abudharam, and Attias.

120 As evidence of the grand duke’s non-discriminatory approach, the document mentioned the involvement of the Jews in the municipality and in the deputations in charge of the Chamber of Public Payments and the licensing of commercial brokers (sensali). See Andrea Addobbati, “Le molte teste dell’Idra. I sensali livornesi nell’età delle riforme,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines 127 (2015): https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrim.2181. It also claimed that the grand duke had mandated the membership of Jews in academies. In fact, with a few exceptions Tuscan sites of scholarly and literary sociability such as academies remained closed to Jews: Ulrich Wyrwa, Juden in der Toskana und in Preußen im Vergleich. Aufklärung und Emanzipation in Florenz, Livorno, Berlin und Königsberg i. Pr. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 30–43 and 39–40 for the episode of the academy of the Faticanti. See also Wyrwa, “‘Perché i moderni rabbini pretendono di dare ad intendere una favola chimerica…’. L’illuminismo toscano e gli ebrei,” Quaderni storici 1 (2000): 139–62. More extensively, on the participation of Jews in the life of Tuscan cultural institutions, see Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, 39–126. On the exceptional figure of Joseph Attias, see ibid., 39–67, and Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto, 307–38. See also Liana E. Funaro, Un sentier sparso di luce. Salomone Fiorentino fra Firenze e Livorno (Nola: Il laboratorio, 2014).

121 Gabriele Turi, “Viva Maria.” La reazione alle riforme leopoldine (1790–1799) (Florence: Olschki, 1969), 3–25; Carlo Mangio, Politica toscana e rivoluzione. Momenti di storia livornese (Pisa: Pacini, 1974), 1–36; Samuel Fettah, “Les émeutes de Santa Giulia à Livourne. Conflits locaux et résistances au despotisme éclairé dans l’Italie de la fin du xviii^e siècle,” Provence historique 202 (2000): 459–70.

122 Andrea Addobbati, Facchinerie. Immigrati bergamaschi, valtellinesi e svizzeri nel porto di Livorno (1602–1847) (Pisa: ETS, 2018), 113–22.

123 Pietro Vigo, ed., Livorno e gli avvenimenti del 1790–91 con notizie di Firenze e altri documenti. Diario anonimo (Livorno: Meucci, 1907), 41.

124 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 141v–142, “Memoria” (March 1791).

125 ASLi, Governo, 43, fol. 145, brothers Aghib and brothers Abudharam to Berte (June 2, 1790).

126 ASLi, Governo, 43, fols. 163–187, “Memoria Pierallini.” See also fols. 156–158v, “Obiezioni fatte dall’Auditor Consultore del Governo di Livorno alla supplica dei fratelli Aghib e Abudaram”; and fols. 158v–162, “Risposta ai dubbi promossi dall’Auditor Pierallini contro la supplica degli Aghib e Abudaram umiliata a S.M.C. intorno al Teatro di Livorno e sua Accademia.”

127 ASLi, Governo, 43, fol. 178v.

128 ASLi, Governo, 43, fol. 179.

129 Hewitt, “I teatri di Livorno,” 39; Alessandra Feri, “Il teatro musicale a Livorno dall’età leopoldina alla fine del Settecento (1766–1799)” (Laurea diss., Università di Firenze, 1994–1995), 197–98.

130 Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).

131 Furio Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni. Dalla burocrazia alla politica sotto Pietro Leopoldo di Toscana (Milan: Ricciardi, 1966).

132 Francesco Maria Gianni, Scritti di pubblica economia, storico-economici e storico-politici, vol. 1 (Florence: Niccolai, 1848), 261.

133 Ibid., 262.

134 Ibid.

135 Said, Orientalism, 27.

136 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” [1971], in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. and trans. Donald F. Bouchard with Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139–164, here p. 139.

137 Said, Orientalism, 27–28.

138 “The Orient is a stage on which the whole East is confined,” mused Said (ibid., 67).

139 Nuovo Teatro del Signor Gamerra, vol. 4 (Pisa: Ranieri Prosperi, 1789), 73 (act 4, scene 3).

140 ASLi, Commissariato, fondo segreto, 2, Samuel Lusena and Aron B. Carvaglio to the commissario (November 1789).