Difference Between Slavery And Indentured Servants

“Indentured servitude declined over the century, and most of these domestic servants were now either free women or slave women” (Coryell, pg. 104). Those who worked in a servitude role were indentured servants, who had the ability to work a number of service years in order to earn their freedom and they would be given a small plot of land, afterwards, to continue to thrive. Eventually, in order to compensate for the growing American need of lower overall costs to purchase labor workers, longer time in servitude, and to decrease the need to give land lots, the term of indentured servant changed to slave, which limited potential freedoms and humanity. This demand for labor changed the owner and slave relationship. “Owners began providing minimal clothing and food. Owners viewed all of slaves’ labor as their own” (Coryell, pg. 105). By forcing a dependent relationship, owners were able to maintain their

During the 18th century, indentured servitude had become very common in British North America; this was one way many poor Europeans could come to America for a “better” life. In order to emigrate to the American colonies, they would sign long-term labor contracts, to pay off the debt they picked up when they wanted to come to the American colonies. The primary source, “Gottlieb Mittelberger on the Trade in Indentured Servants” is written by Mittelberger himself in 1750, who was an emigrant that arrived in British North America as an indentured servant. In this source, he explains the negatives of coming to British North America; the ups and downs he faced, for instance: the long and horrible voyage conditions, and the sale of human beings once they had landed.

Before the 1680's, indentured servitude was the primary source of labor in the newly developed colonies. There

Whileas New England continued to manifest through religion and began to grow increasingly, Chesapeake Bay was forced to hire indentured servants, mostly men, and convicts which worked up to six years, soon causing the population only to decrease. To cultivate tobacco, planters in Chesapeake brought in large numbers of English workers, mostly young men who came as indentured servants. Each indentured servant meant more land for his sponsor under the headright system, which lead to rather larger scale farming. The society and community within New England wanted to allow the citizens with education, (mostly boys who would become ministers)but this way of life would lead to creating the first universities. The overall work ethic and mindset of the peoples in each region would lead them to define themselves and shape for their economy and

One of the plantation records describes a servant working for three years to “… teach two of your negroes to make potts and dripps..." (43) under the agreement between the plantation manager & the potter. During this period, servants were used to teach slaves skills that were needed in the plantation. Although the servants were going to get replaced by slaves due to cheap labor, they obeyed for whoever they were working for just for money. On (page 44), the author displays statistical data used to represent the number of male servants & slaves that worked on the plantation during the year of 1768 on Table 1. The table portrays the trend of the slaves overtaking the servants’ population and job wise as the slaves were more in number & more involved with jobs in the plantation rather than the servants were. This would display the overturning of the indenture system as many owners desired slaves due to their cheap costs rather than servants & the servant’s skills that were being taught to

This made indentured servitude, America’s first labor system, appealing to immigrants because it gave them a chance to improve their lives. Indentured servants consisted of mostly young men and some women who signed a contract to work a specific length of time for an employer, also called the master. The length of servitude intially ranged between three to seven years. Servants gained passage to America, food, clothing, and shelter.. Upon completion of their contract, servants were to receive their freedom dues. These dues included land, barrels of corn, and a few articles of clothing. Many also received extra dues such as a horse or cow and specific tools for trade depending on their gender. In return, an employer had laborers to tend their fields and more land was awarded to them for each servant he brought over from England. The purchase of indentured servants was almost three times cheaper than the purchase of African slaves that started coming to Virginia from the Caribbean. The indentured system seemed to beneficial for both the laborer as well as the employer,

Before the 1680's, indentured servitude was the primary source of labor in the newly developed colonies. There were

One huge part of the slave business was the use of indentured servants. These people were not total slaves. In fact, they were just working to gain citizenship in the states. In the seventeenth century, they were relied on heavily for labor. In fact, they were relied on more than actual slaves. However, about three fifths of the way through the century, plantation owners quit using them. They figured out that people did not want to do

Slavery and indentured servitude were the primary means of help for the wealthy in America. Either as a slave or as an indentured servant a person was required to work in the fields maintain crops, as a house servant or as the owner of debtor so chooses. The treatment of both was very similar, but the method and means to which they came to America were uniquely different as the following examples will illustrate.

In the years from 1600 to 1783 the thirteen colonies in North America were introduced to slavery and underwent the American Revolutionary War. Colonization of the New World by Europeans during the seventeenth century resulted in a great expansion of slavery, which later became the most common form of labor in the colonies. According to Peter Kolchin, modern Western slavery was a product of European expansion and was predominantly a system of labor. Even with the introduction of slavery to the New World, life still wasn’t as smooth as we may presume. Although the early American colonists found it perfectly fine to enslave an entire race of people, they

Despite being held at the bottom of the social pyramid for throughout colonial times, the labor of the colonies would prove to be far from useless. While vast, open land was turned into numerous plantations in the colonies by rich planters, the plantations could not purely be run by their owners, creating a great need for labor. This lack of labor would eventually be solved through the use of African slaves, but after the first shipment of slaves to Jamestown in 1619, few were purchased due to high prices for an extended amount of time. The planters, however, would be able to fulfill their need for labor through English indentured servants. Through the use of indentured servants, basically free labor was provided to land owners, while

The two forms of involuntary labor were great asset to communities but the system of slavery was more established in state affairs and issues surrounding the practice debated on both sides. Slaves were victims of lifelong hereditary services which spikes the significant difference between indentured servants. Unlike indentured servants, who could negotiate their service, as described in the account of Mittelberger, slavery had no terms of signed contracts. An indentured servant had rooms to bargain, refuse and accept a buyer’s offer and was entitled to certain provision once a contract finish. As Mittelberger explains, “he or she is entitled to a new suit of cloths at parting;…a man gets, in addition, a horse, a women and a cow” (89). However,

Indentured servitude was the institutional arrangement devised to increase labor mobility from Europe (particularly England) to America, and it was the labor system that preceded American slavery. Its emergence in Virginia in the seventeenth century can be seen as a development expedient to the circumstances surrounding the colony. Indentured servitude was practically the only way in which a poor person could get to the colonies and planters could be supplied with cheap labor. Richard Frethorne's document written in 1623, The Experiences of an Indentured Servant, legalized the master-servant relationship, specified the kind of labor to be performed, the length of time to be served, and the dues owed to the

Before the Civil War, the growth tobacco, rice and other goods in the South called for a necessity of labor on plantations. As tobacco became a cash crop there was an increase in the activity of growing tobacco. Currently, there were no machinery to take care of the work on these plantations. Therefore, there was a need for cheap labor to provide for the lands. The Virginia Company developed an economic system of indentured servitude to obtain servants who would most likely do the duties on the servants. This system was successful because after the thirty-year war had just ended and many people had lost their jobs or were unemployed (“Indentured Servants in the U.S.”). Majority of the immigrant population, over two- thirds, had arrived in

During the development of the colonies and the nation as a whole, slaves were utilized in order to produce the crops and perform laborious tasks that were “below” white people. In the 1660s, there was an increased demand for tobacco products as well as indigo and rice in England (“African American Slavery in the Colonial Era, 1619-1775”). In order to fulfill the demand, there was a spike in interest in purchasing slaves. More and more slaves were needed to produce larger amounts of crops for the plantation owners.