Indentured Servants In America

For a long time, Jamestown, VA took in many indentured servants—a worker who is under contract of an employer for up to seven years in exchange for transportation and many necessities (clothing, food, drink, and lodging)—in order to fulfill the duties that the owners couldn’t. Though employers made Jamestown seem like a loving and welcoming place, it was just the opposite. These indentured servants were treated equally to slaves, but many were willing to risk their lives in order to gain their own land. Once they obtained land of their own, they could grow their own tobacco and become extremely wealthy.

The slave trade into the United States began in 1620 with the sale of nineteen Africans to a colony called “Virginia”. These slaves were brought to America on a Dutch ship and were sold as indentured slaves. An Indentured slave is a person who has an agreement to serve for a specific amount of time and will no longer be a servant once that time has passed, they would

A plantation economy, an economy founded on an agricultural mass production like tobacco, sustained the source of income of the Chesapeake regions, consisting Virginia, Maryland, and northern North Carolina. The early settlers soon realized the urgent need for labor in the New World. Due to the fact that many potential immigrants could not afford an expensive trip across the Atlantic, the Virginia Company developed the system of indentured servitude to attract common laborers. Since tobacco required intensive hand labor all year round, indentured servants have become vital to the colonial economy. "Virginia Servant and Slave Laws" represent the elaborate efforts of masters' to profit from indentured servants and slaves against runaway and

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.

The decline of indentured servitude and the rise of chattel slavery were caused by economic factors of the English settlers in the late 17th century. Colonists continually tried to allure laborers to the colony. The head right system was to give the indentured servant a method of becoming independent after a number of years of service. Colonists chiefly relied on Indentured Servitude, in order to facilitate their need for labor. The decreasing population combined with a need for a labor force, led colonists to believe that African slaves were the most efficient way to acquire a labor force that would satisfy their needs.

The foods that were brought back to the Old World such as, potatoes and corn proved a vital and necessary resource to the Europeans. Another short-term effect of the Columbian exchange was the migration of African slaves to the Americas. The majority of the Africans that were enslaved were caught in village raids or were war captives. They were caught by other Africans and sold to the European slave traders for money and other prized possessions. For slaves, the voyage known as the Middle Passage was a terrifying and perilous journey, with a death rate potentially as high as 50%.

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.

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.

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

“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

People were running to America from England due to the religious intolerances and harassment; political turmoil and military drafts. So to leave often someone would agree with a land owner in america to be an indentured servant in turn for the land owner to pay their passage over to the new land. Said person then would willingly work for several years until their time was up and then they were free to go on about their life. The second group of people most commonly traveling from England to America were criminals. In England the penalty for crime was death, so it became practice for the king to pardon them as long as they agreed to leave the country.

After reading the through the power point on the scarcity of food globally, I was sad for the people that were starving. They did not ask to be born where they were. However, it is a seeds job to grow where it lands. These people in their starving nations could theoretically be feed if waste was eliminated according to the World Resources Institute.

A male landowner has the right to overwork their servants or slaves and expect their wives to be obeying, but the British have no right to take from us our money and resources. Indentured servants are bound to the landowner for a fixed period of time and slaves are their property. Landowners are responsible for providing food, clothing and shelter for them, so it is only naturally right that they can put them to work. There are also no working restrictions that prevent them from overworking either the servants or slaves. People of color are also inferior races that do not intellectually know what is wrong or right, so it is only fit that their decisions and rights are controlled. Women are naturally born as the inferior sex as well. They are

Labor in colonial America was scarce. Explain the development of using indentured servants for labor in the colonies. Below are some of the items you may include: