The Servant Labor System In Colonial America

As Colonial Virginia entered into the 17th century, it was a land marked with opportunity to make a new and also, most importantly, profitable life in the New World. (Cutter Lecture) When the century began, however, it was not the citizens as a whole hoping to make a profit from this new land but rather a small group of greedy landowners profiting off of the work of their indentured servants. (CL) Sure the indentured servants were given a chance to fulfill their contract and one day become free to pursue their own dreams, but the likelihood of this in the beginning was next to none due to harsh living conditions. (CL) According to Richard Frethorne in 1623, "nor is there nothing to be gotten here

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

3). Also, slave woman is considered more valuable due to the child. The law enacted in Virginia shows masters' goal to profit from the children of slaves, "In 1662, Virginia lawmakers specified that the children of slave mothers inherited their mothers' slave status" ("Virginia Servants and Slave Laws," in Handout Set, p. 2). Under theses harsh circumstances, servants and slaves, regardless of gender and ethnicity, tend to work together and that became a great fear of the ruling class.

This highly regarded and scholarly book examines the fundamental paradox of freedom and the establishment of slavery in American history. The central question posed by Morgan is “how a people could have developed the dedication to human liberty and dignity exhibited by the leaders of the American Revolution and at the same time have developed and maintained a system of labor that denied human liberty and dignity every hour of the day” (Morgan 1975, 4-5). The location in Morgan’s research is colonial Virginia, once the largest slave state and home of proponents of liberty. Morgan’s detailed discussion of: the rise of race slavery over indentured servants and poor Englishmen as the solution to workforce growth, a ruling class bound to the English tradition of superiority, and acceptance of lifelong denial of human equality in the face of the fight for liberty demonstrates the paradox for the reader.

In the seventeenth century, European people begin to settle in the North America. They started to invest in the natural resources in the eastern America using the best resource they found in the land, captured Native Indians. Many poor European people migrated to North America for opportunity to earn money and rise of their social status. They came to the America as indentured or contracted servants because the passage aboard was too expensive for them. By the time many Native Indians and indentured servants die from the hard labor and low morality rate, masters of the plantation purchased more slaves from Africa to profit themselves. The “Virginia Servant and Slave Laws” reveal the dominant efforts of masters to profit from their servants and slaves by passing laws to treat slaves as their properties and to control servants and slaves by suppressing the rebellion using brutal force. Masters and rich planters sought to earn more profit from mercantilism, or trade, economic system by violating the civil rights of Native Indian, African, and poor European people and this thought and practice still exist today as a form of racism and segregation in America.

Indentured servants were a limited resource as they would eventually become free. The non-slaves became more intransigent and apt to resist the efforts of the ruling class’s economic and political subjugation upon them. Southern planters began to look toward the African slave trade as a reliable source of controllable labor. The economic power of England was rising and helped to increase the level of slave purchasing and selling. The influx of white indentured servants from England into Virginia drastically decreased which only accelerated the adoption of slavery. African slaves were a more easily controlled and exploited labor pool. “By the 1730s, the number of white indentured servants had dwindled to insignificance” (Nash, 60). When considering the legacy of Bacon’s Rebellion upon the transformation of Virginia, and beyond, this event in history “demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class – what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery” (Africans in

The cause for this shift in social policy cannot be accurately traced through the events of the 17th century, but several clues to this alteration in slave treatment can be found. It is often presumed that racism led to the inevitable slavery acts in the 18th century, but this rationale is rather unfounded based on the idea that many African-Americans were in fact free and maintained their own farms in Virginia. The cause of slavery is much more subtle than a prejudice view of racial differences.

In Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay area during the 1600s the slave community evolved over a long period of time. Problems occurred regarding their labor that had an important influence on the switch to a society dominated by slave labor. During the 1600s labor in the Chesapeake shifted to slave society because of a shift in culture, economic issues, and frustrations of the tobacco market boom. Each of these reasons all relates back to the labor problem the colonists were facing in Virginia.

it was declared in Virginia that it would not be a crime to kill a disobedient slave while punishing him/her. Moreover in 1669, slave masters were banned from emancipating slaves. Slaves that were given their freedom could not stay in the colony. Furthermore, Virginia voted to banish Europeans who marry a black, mulatto, or Indian person. It can be concluded that these laws fashioned the chattel slavery in the United States

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

While slavery was a horrific thing that led to the mistreatment of millions of black people, it had the power to last for centuries. When looking closely at historical accounts it becomes easier to see why this horrible practice was able to sustain for so long. One of the reasons was because the economy of Colonial America relied heavily on the labor of slaves. Farming, the slave trade itself, and the harsh treatment of slaves were all driven by the greed of slave owners. Another reason that slavery lasted so long was racism. During this time, the black population was considered inferior to the white population. This helped to promote the cruel behaviors that occurred in slavery. Lastly, many whites actually felt that the slaves were treated

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:

Slavery as we know today, is still considered one of the most talked about subjects in history. The historical backdrop of bondage in early America incorporates the absolute most disturbing stories from our past. Slavery began when African Slaves initially arrived in the North American settlement of Jamestown in 1619. These slaves helped with the creation of profoundly lucrative products such as tobacco. In this manner, it was absolutely a rural undertaking that would later provoke the presence of one of the chronicled treacheries done particularly to the African migrants. The issue took course during the sixteenth and eighteenth century American