Suzanne Desrochers
suzanne.desrochers@kcl.ac.uk
Funded by ORS, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Alma Baxter Foundation
Thesis title
The Transportation of Women from London and Paris Prisons to America in the Early Modern Period
Research
My thesis will compare the French recruitment of women to Québec and Louisiana to that of the women sent to Virginia and other British colonies of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I intend to show how gender shaped the migration experience of the women. I will also explore the question of whether the women were voluntary migrants to the colonies and how women’s agency can be understood in the early modern period. Why were the women recruited to the colonies (labour, marriage)? How were the women’s living conditions (in prisons and general hospitals) prior to their recruitment? Who were the recruiters (clergy, hospital administrators, ship recruiting agents)? How much and what sort of information were the women given prior to departing for the colonies? How did their recruitment resemble/differ from that of their male counterparts? How were the women perceived in early modern society as single female migrants?
Biography
Suzanne completed both her BA and MA at York University in Toronto, Canada. She researched and wrote a historical novel on the Filles du roi of Seventeenth-Century New France for her interdisciplinary MA thesis in History and Creative Writing. The novel, Bride of New France, is forthcoming with Penguin Canada.
Supervisor