Recent scholarship confirms that early-modern maritime workers were often married, and that sailors’ wives were far from passive economic subjects. They actively developed strategies to augment the family income while playing a role in their husbands’ private trade. Using early eighteenth-century correspondence in a microhistorical approach, this article focuses on women’s economic agency in the coastal Southern Netherlands. Instead of separating household maritime economic activities into a male and female sphere, we examine how marital co-operation functioned by passing on economic information and assembling profitable private cargoes. We conclude that marital co-operation was pivotal for securing a livelihood in maritime communities. |
