Indentured Servants In America Research Paper

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

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.

Indentured servants served as temporary laborers to the farmers and plantation owners in the colonies. Servants were required to work until a certain age, while slaves were bought and sold to work without an ending date. According to “An Act Concerning Servants And Slaves” [ “An Act Concerning Servants And Slaves,”Unites States History

The purpose of having indentured servants in colonial America was to populate and build a new world. Male indentured servants were under contracts to learn certain set of skills such as being a carpenter [13], a sawyer [4] or wheelwright [2]. These jobs moulded male indentured servants primarily to be physical labourers especially farmhands which required little to none literacy skills. All they needed to know was how to finish their given labour. Therefore, for male indentured servants, even though the literacy rate was very low, education was not of great and primary concern.

In some ways, indentured servants in Virginia had lives just as bad as the African slaves in the West Indies had. They had less value for masters, because the masters did not have to buy the indentured servants. For this reason, indentured servant masters could work their temporary slaves so hard that they would not live to receive their freedom dues. The indentured

In 1625 and according to the British historian Betty Wood, 23 Africans lived in Virginia. This number had increased thirty five years later to 950 representing three or four percent of the whole colony population. This number rose and the colony had more indentured servants. Some historians such as Edmund Morgan said that the treatment of the indentured servants was mysterious from that of slaves. During this period of time, white indentured servants and black servants met each other, worked and even escaped from their holders together. Yet, there was a big difference between European and black indentured servants. The European could demand the help of his governments and ask for his freedom but the Africans could not because their are blacks

Indentured Servants Lived Better Lives Than Slaves in the 18th Century When the colonies were first starting to form, the people settling in America had no idea how to work on the land because they were wealthy enough to not have to work in England. Indentured servants and slaves came into America soon after the settlers came, because there was work to be done. Indentured servants and slaves both had hard lifestyles but indentured servants lived life easier due to being seen more as humans than slaves were, indentured servants had good clothes to keep them warm and help them blend in with the crowd and if they were not caught after they had run away, they had a better chance at surviving in the world. Indentured servants were people coming over from England to work for families in America, and in exchange for a certain amount of years of work, they could help pay for their families to come live with them in the

Some of the distinctions between slaves and indentured servants can be noticed by looking at the trades and tools mentioned in the advertisements, a cursory view of these advertisements shows very few slaves who have a trade or tool set mentioned, but many of the servants do, the best I have seen written of a slave is a cooper,

Just like how I knew my other article was a scholarly journal was because while searching for articles to choose from I clicked “peer-revied”. Additionally, my article ha d agret amount of cited sources within the reading. Secondly, with the article there was multiple table graphs one stating “Length of Contract of Adult American Indentured Servants, 1800-1818. This was a good way for me to get a visual view as to how many servants there were indentured.

Between 1750 to the present in Latin America and the Caribbean, harsh and oppressive working conditions remained constant, however slavery was gradually eradicated and the labor system changed to a wage labor system after the abolishment of indentured servitude.

Indentured servants were offered an opportunity to travel to the New World to become cash crop farmers. Working condition, though harsh were reasonable. Families were given food, clothes and shelter. As time went on, and the demand for cash crops sky rocketed, turned English settlers to find a better way to cut down cost of labor. English settlers sought out a new form of slavery taking human beings and turning them into property. This did cut down cost, but created problems still relevant centuries after.

In the seventeenth century, slaves and indentured servants were considered property. The difference between the two groups of people, is slavery lasted a lifetime while indentured servants labor lasted for four to six years until the servant were able to pay their owner back. So under these circumstances, slaves and indentured servants’ lives were very similar but also different. Based on their clothing and the skills they had, slaves and indentured servant lifestyles were different.

The seventeenth century was a time when economy was starting to flourish. With all the resources found in the New World, and many laws created, there was much work to be done. The growth of this land led more and more people to travel to it. Some people at this time would hire indentured servants to help with house chores and take care of the farms. Being an indentured servant meant that a deal was made with the owner of the land to bring the person over to America for about four to five years. In return the land owner would be their master. The servants were given a passage into America, food and shelter. They were also promised that after their time was up they would be able to own their own farms,

Around the 1830s after the abolition of slavery, over a half million Indians were transported to thirteen mainland’s and island nations in the Caribbean. The British brought them in to work the plantations as indentured workers, primarily the sugar cane farms. Work in these farms is extremely intense.

An "indentured servant" was a person who borrowed money and thus usually "voluntarily" agreed to work off the debt during a specific time period. While working off the debt they essentially became a servant, to those from whom they had borrowed money, for a specific period of time. Although contracts varied, sometimes they specified that the servants, when set free, were to be set free with some money, or a plot of land, or even a spouse. In contrast, if slaves were set free they simply had to hope for the generosity of their owners to prevail in any shape or form-which it often did not.