Indentured Servitude Essay

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.

George Alsop’s memoir of his service as an indentured servant in the colony of Maryland provides an insightful look into the lives of indentured servants in Maryland during the middle of the 17th Century. Throughout this period of colonial America the British were notorious in their use of propaganda to attract young British men into indentured servitude as the use of slaves was not yet perpetual, and would not be until 1670. Alsop depicts an idealistic view of indenture servitude in Maryland during his own time of service, which may have been the case, however this view can be contested by Nathaniel

“The company in England was convinced by 1609 that the settlers would have to grow at least part of their own food,”(page 5, Morgan). The settlers had to step up since Indian labor plan was not going to work well. The task they had to accomplish depended on their life. Settlers had to work from five in the morning to around eight at night. Winter conditions changed the time a little by taking off about 2 hours. Complaints started coming up about laziness and irresponsibility from the workmen. People started raising prices to survive. Men were always hungry barely having the energy to work. That was one of the excuses some men brought up to explain why there working they way they are. The author explains more indebt of the laziness and problems. Even men with large amounts of land could not afford labors. The government issued laws for problems with work and labor, “ Sometimes men were obliged to take on a poor boy as a servant whether they needed him or not. The parish might lighten the burden by paying a fee, but it might also fine a man who refused to take a boy assigned to him,”(page 7, Morgan). Things were falling apart.

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

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.

Slavery and Indentured servitude were vital to the success of the British colonies in several different ways. The difference between slaves and servants is that slaves were owed for life or until their master decided to let them leave or they died. Indentured servants were granted freedom, safe passage to the country and land ownership after working the length of their contract, as previously agreed upon. One of the main reasons slaves and indentured servants were so vital to the British colonies is that they were cheap and effective labor. They were able to work in the fields planting, fertilizing, watering and picking the crop when it was ready to be harvested for consumption or profit.

After slavery came to an end in the 1800s, the rise of a new source of labor that became known as indentured servitude began. Indentured servitude is a system of labor where people serve under a contract, to work for a certain number of years, with pay along with food and housing. As the Industrial Revolution continued to grow, the demand for cheap labor increased, and due to the abolishment of slavery, the request for a cheaper sources of labor also increased. Indentured servitude replaced slavery, behind the scenes it was technically slavery. Although it was not referred to as slavery, indentured service was a resolution to the abolishment of slavery, where employers could get workers to sign a contract and have them agree to all their conditions. Is the end of slavery caused laborers to engage in various extreme conditions, the

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.

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

Conversely, the myth about every settler in early Virginia being from the middle class and bringing a family is full of misconceptions. For example, the indentured servants that made up most of the population of early Virginia were not from the middle class. Nor, did the servants come with their families. In fact, all of the servants were from the bottom of England’s social ranking and

The heavy scarcities that the Colonial Era faced was relieved with the foundation and development of human labor which, depending on a person’s distinct appearance and social backgrounds, progressed differently throughout the regions of Colonial America. Three individuals have been highlighted to differentiate between the attributes of human labor upbringing: Mary Jemison, Olaudah Equiano and Gottlieb Mittelberger. Each individual had been transported to separate regions of Colonial America from their origin countries to participate either willingly or unwillingly, in agricultural-based labor. With completely discrete, formative years, each person had acquired a different assimilation both culturally and through physical toil which accentuates

New York would be much different than it is today, had it not been for slavery and indentured servitude. They both had an impact on how New York came to be. “...[indentured servitude and] slavery was a key institution in the development of New York, from its formative years" (Slavery in New York). In 1776, the daily lives of many people in New York City were confined by “chains” for both slavery and indentured servitude. These were both socially acceptable and similar in many ways.

By the 1670’s prices for tobacco entered a fifty-year period of inactivity and decline, as land became limited and costly. Thereafter, in 1681, Maryland abandoned its requirement for servants to obtain land with their freedom dues. This made the Chesapeake land less of an opportunity for immigrants (Norton, 42). Furthermore, the restoration of the colonies provided mirgrants other settlement options (65). As time passed throughout the 1680’s, the cost for indentured servants rose by nearly sixty percent in some colonial regions. In Europe and England with the increase of income; It then took a smaller share of one’s annual salary to purchase voyage to the colonies, enabling immigrants to refrain from entering indentured contracts. For many of

In order to fully understand and analyze a period of time, a full examination of people's everyday life is quite necessary. Although inferior to men, the roles and status of women in eighteenth century colonial America, contributed to the prospering society. The role of the family and extended kinship ties in the lives of African Americans is seen as a unifying and supporting force in times of suffering.

“American history is largely the record of the adjustment of a migrating people to their environment.” The European immigrants during the seventeenth and eighteenth century had to adjust to a diverse climate, ranging from hot and humid to freezing cold. They viewed America as a huge, diverse land with areas suitable for agriculture, abundant natural resources, access to harbors and water. Labor was one of the establishment that started since the discovery of plentiful cheap and arable land. Necessities of life could be easily fulfilled by involving in agriculture due to high wages. There was a constant preference of owning a piece of land and becoming a freeholder. “...man continues long a Labourer for others, but gets a Plantation of his own, no Man continues long a Journeyman to a Trade but goes among those new Settlers, and set up for himself, &c.”