John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a distinguished British–Dutch soldier and noted author. He was born in 1744 in Dendermonde, which then was in the Austrian Netherlands, to Robert Stedman, a Scot and an officer in the Dutch Republic's Scots Brigade, and his wife of presumed Dutch noble lineage, Antoinetta Christina van Ceulen. He lived most of his childhood in the Dutch Republic with his parents but spent time with his uncle in Scotland.