Seeing women in the early English and Dutch East India Companies

Abstract This article focuses on women’s presence (and absence) in the archives and histories of the English and Dutch East India Companies in the early modern period. By assessing how women have been seen in and across surviving archival forms – institutional records, legal documents, personal accounts – I reveal how women have been obscured within or marginalized from such ‘Company histories’. Two first-hand accounts written by women in the period – Johanna Maria van Riebeeck and Judith Weston – are analysed in depth. Grounded in the study of early modern life writing and mobility, my analysis foregrounds the preoccupations and experiences of these women as they moved across company spaces.