"I was their midwife": Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood on Seventeenth-Century Slave Ships

By Dr. Andrea Mosterman
Ships are usually seen as masculine spaces, and slave ships are no exception. But as the slave voyages database shows, about a fourth of the captives transported on board seventeenth and eighteenth-century Dutch slavers were in fact women. In this presentation, I explore the experiences of women on board these slavers, paying special attention to pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in these spaces.