Difference Between Slavery And Indentured Servants

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

Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. These religion and racial differences along with the economic demand for more labor played the key roles in the formation of slavery in the English colonies. When the Europeans first arrived to the Americas in the late sixteenth century, at the colony of Roanoke, the thought of chattel slavery had neither a clear law nor economic practice with the English. However by the end of that following century, the demand for slaves in the

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 were

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.

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

Indentured servants were used in early colonial times as a means of passage to the new world. The cash crops of the early settlers were exhaustingly labor intensive. In fact, U.S. History (2015) indicated that “the growth of tobacco, rice, and indigo and the plantation economy created a tremendous need for labor in Southern English America” (p. 1). The technology did not exist at the time for machinery that clears the ground and works the land as it does today. The work had to be done by hand; from clearing and prepping the fields to harvesting the crops, it was all manual labor for which the new land did not have ample supply of.

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

“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

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

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

American history, as we know it, all began when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered the New World. Soon later, the Europeans began to populate the New World as well. They created the first settlement in the Americas, known as Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown was responsible for creating the idea of indentured servants. People were even brought to this colony all the way from Africa to fulfill this idea . The whole indentured servant idea did not last too long, because the idea of seasoning came about. Seasoning was the Europeans’ way of having slaves work lightly for one to two hours a day. The idea of seasoning became very useful when the plantation of tobacco and rice came to farms. These new farms created the need for slaves.

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

From the outset, the issue of labor in the Chesapeake was a dominant force in the creation of colonial society. The origins of colonial labor rested on the shoulders of indentured servants, often unemployed laborers from England sent to the colony by the Virginia Company. After serving a term of seven years, each servant was then entitled to freedom and the opportunity to work in the colony to best achieve individual benefits and the success offered by the New World. The early generations of these servants turned freemen posed little problem to their former masters as they constituted to small a segment of the population to