Spaces of Enslavement

Scholar Andrea Mosterman walks us through her new book “Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York” to relay “how spatial analysis can be used to better understand how enslavers used space to control the people they enslaved, and how enslaved people resisted in these spaces.” Professor Mosterman’s groundbreaking research will ensure that the next time you drive past an 18^th Century stone house in New York you will search out its spaces of enslavement that are hidden in plain sight, reminders of the cruel treatment of African and African Americans in early New York.

Andrea Mosterman is associate professor in Atlantic History and Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History at the University of New Orleans. She studies slavery and the slave trade in the Dutch Atlantic world. Her book Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York (Cornell University Press, October 2021) has won the 2020 Hendricks Award for best book-length manuscript relating to New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience. She currently researches the voyage of the Dutch slave ship the Gideon and the seventeenth-century Dutch Atlantic slave trade with North America.

 Thomas J. Ruller recently retired from his   position as New York State Archivist. An active   professional for 35 years, he is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles and reviews on the use of technology in Archives and the preservation of records in electronic form. Tom has been a consultant for several state governments and other organizations focusing on electronic records management and preservation. He remains actively engaged as a Board Member and Steward of the Archives Partnership Trust.