In Spaces of Enslavement,Andrea C. Mosterman addresses the persistent myth that the colonial Dutch system of slavery was more humane.

Investigating practices of enslavement in New Netherland and then in New York, Mosterman shows that these ways of racialized spatial control held much in common with the southern plantation societies.

In the 1620s, Dutch colonial settlers brought slavery to the banks of the Hudson River and founded communities from New Amsterdam in the south to Beverwijck near the terminus of the navigable river. When Dutch power in North America collapsed and the colony came under English control in 1664, Dutch descendants continued to rely on enslaved labor.

Mosterman describes how the movements of enslaved persons were controlled in homes and in public spaces such as workshops, courts, and churches. She addresses how enslaved people responded to regimes of control by escaping from or modifying these spaces so as to expand their activities within them. Through a close analysis of homes, churches, and public spaces, Mosterman shows that, over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the region's Dutch communities were engaged in a daily struggle with Black New Yorkers who found ways to claim freedom and resist oppression.

The book is published by Cornell University Press, in association with the New Netherland Institute. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"Offers an in-depth study of the often-overlooked spaces where enslaved people lived and labored..." (William and Mary Quarterly)

"A welcome corrective to the history of slavery in New Netherlandand, more generally, in the North..." (New York History)

"Exceeds current work on African American interactions with the Dutch." (Graham Hodges, Colgate University)