Sailors' families and the urban institutional framework in early modern Holland

This article points to a largely neglected theme in the maritime history: the important role of sailors' families in urban seafaring communities during the Early Modern Period. At the end of the seventeenth century and during the first decades of the eighteenth century, about 20% of the crewmembers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were married. Accordingly, in the towns in Holland where the VOC was present, many women had to run a household by themselves for a long period of time. The sailors' families were often confronted by emotional and financial distress, which to some extent affected the financial expenses of VOC towns as well. Many of these families were however able to cope because they received material support from various urban institutions. The Company created a system that encouraged sailors to send their money home during voyages, while urban poor relief often temporarily complemented the family's budget. Contrary to other married women, wives of sailors could obtain the legal power to engage in financial transactions, or to have access to inheritances. Town councils, civil courts, church councils, charity institutions and the East India Company were all willing to help the seamen's families. Their motives were twofold: while urban communities benefited from financially stable families, and the VOC compensated for their low pay by offering their employees fringe benefits, the attitudes towards seamen's wives also indicate that the urban elites genuinely wanted to provide some assistance to these needy families.     

Survival strategies of widows and their families in early modern Holland, c. 1580–1750

This article analyses the impact of widowhood upon women in early modern urban society in Holland. Widows were able to maintain their households and to minimize the discontinuity with their lives when married. A remarkably egalitarian inheritance and marital property law, access to a broad range of occupations, a privileged status, an extended poor relief system, institutionalised mutual assistance and new forms of financial provisions for widows enabled widows to survive after the loss of an adult male breadwinner. However, legal rights, social provisions and economic opportunities available to women in the Dutch Golden Age and thereafter, could not prevent social polarization after women lost their spouse.