ABSTRACT
Early modern travel was often portrayed as an all-male activity, yet a more subtle, gendered reality was uncovered by trailblazing British research. In the autumn of 1622, Johan Berck, the future Dutch ambassador in Venice, embarked on a man-of-war in Den Briel to take up his new commission. Even though the tide was already turning in the late seventeenth century, it was not until the eighteenth century that the slow-burn feminization of Netherlandish travel behaviour really gathered momentum. Netherlandish women were thus travelling more frequently in the eighteenth century, but their elbow room was often limited. Women’s freedom to move was not only restricted in a figurative way, but also in a more literal sense. Most early modern travel journals evidence small, yet meaningful, differences in travel behaviour. Early modern travel offered various opportunities to mould a male identity of courage, perseverance, level-headedness, and other qualities.
