Jonathan Israel * 322 Surinam parnassim ( as the synagogue elders were called ) and pillars of local enlightenment, Moseh Pereira de Leon, with exceptional experience as a lower advocate in the Surinam courts as a senior procurator because, in Holland, there was no precedent for appointing Jews to such a position . 2 The Essai historique was chiefly composed by Nassy but several other enlightened highly - educated members of the community, including Moseh Pereira de Leon and S . H . de la Parra had also collaborated . Among many key issues raised but left undecided by the conquest of the United Provinces by the armies of revolutionary France in January 1795 and the setting up of the Dutch Batavian Republic that year, supposedly on the basis of popular sovereignty, democracy and the principles of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, was the question of whether the Jews of the Netherlands and the Dutch New World colonies now possessed full civic rights or not . Th...
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