Virginia Colonists

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

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

John Rolfe was an English settler who based the voyage to America simply on the growth of tobacco. Rolfe’s crew, along with many other young men, traveled to Virginia in 1609 to search for gold. When the ship reached on the shore, all that was seen was sandy beaches and swampy marshes. Neither of which helped with the growth of the major cash crop. Even after the valiant attempts to scrounge for gold, there was no success.With the large amount of crops that Virginia grew, the colony needed to expand west into new land for more room to grow crops. At this time Virginia was an underdeveloped colony that needed settlers to come live and work. Virginia introduced the ever growing indentured servitude. Most of the indentured servants were possibly single men of the lower class. The ship’s list of emigrants

The Virginia Colony economy relied heavily on the mass production of tobacco. Tobacco changed their way of life forever. Before the incredible introduction of tobacco, Virginia was mostly a series of small farms and the population of the communities packed together.

English merchants agreed that a nation’s wealth depended on it’s successful balance of trade. merchants would invest in joint-stock companies with the intention of receiving increased profits. A portion of the companies sought to discover religious freedom while others attempted to gain fortune. In 1606, due to the establishment of the Virginia Company, England now had a successful stabilized colony in America. The chartering of the Virginia company by King James I gave England the right to form settlements in the colony of Virginia. In 1614, the arranged marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas served as a peace symbol between the Native Americans and the British. Rolfe and Pocahontas began farming sweet tobacco. In Europe, tobacco was considered as a popular way to earn money, however, growing tobacco decreases the fertility of the soil causing more plantations to be consumed. Many sugar crops and plantations were scattered which benefited the economy of Virginia as well as Great

In the seventeenth century, the populace that left England for America were influenced by the prospects that could either help them personally, or the mother country. The English settled in regions in America based on the religious acceptance of that area and ones that offered a preferable lifestyle.

However, these colonists soon realized there was no gold, and they tried to find a new way to make a profit. This led to the emergence of the Tobacco industry. John Rolfe was the father of this industry, and ultimately this crop became an economic savior to the Virginia Colony. Tobacco was a way for the colonists to begin making a profit, and it began to sweep across Europe nearly being insatiable. This created a greed for land in order to plant more tobacco.

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.

Throughout the time of the Roanoke catastrophe and the hardships of Jamestown, tobacco made its grand introduction as America’s newest cash commodity that would allow success to flourish in Virginia, with a permanent English presence. Tobacco was formally popularized by a man named John Rolfe in the year 1610 and became the top resource that helped the future of this colony thrive. Tobacco did all of this by turning an

A person under contract to work for another person for a definite period of time, usually without pay but in exchange for free passage to a new country is known as an indentured servant. The servant would become a free man after their debt was paid off. The indentured servant played an important role in the American labor scene from the early seventeenth century to the third decade of the nineteenth century (Heavner 1). Many regions of colonial America had issues with obtaining a big enough labor supply to get work done. Indentured servitude was an initial solution to this problem developed by the Virginia Company and used throughout the British colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Galenson 9).

The land became rapidly exploited and cultivated to produce tobacco. After the establishment of this cash crop, tobacco was glorified and largely advertised in both the colonies and England. As well as its large cultivation of tobacco, its connection to what became known as the Chesapeake Bay served as a prominent economic aspect to Virginia. By mid-century, the establishment of indentured servants had been regulated and used frequently by plantation owners. This being a prominent factor to Virginia's social development, its downfall and rise of slavery also played a prime role in social transformation.

“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

This allowed the freed servants to be self sufficient, and in some cases, these servants would even hire their own indentured servants. However, when these dues were not sufficient and did not include land, some servants had no choice other than continue in servitude. As such, the “freedom dues” would directly affect the colonial economy, determining whether or not there would be additional land owners. The indentured servants would also prove to help the already existing landowners to gain more land. The head right system, implemented in southern colonies such as Virginia and Maryland, gave a landowner or planter 50 acres of land for each servant he paid for to come with him to live in that colony. Here, the indentured servants helped the economy by allowing landowners to expand their territory, and produce more goods/crops. While at work, the servants also had a major and direct effect on the economy. From the early 1600s to the early 1700s, indentured servants comprised the majority of labor on the plantations and farms of the colonies. Without the use of indentured servants, the colonial economy would have crashed, as there would have been no labor to work on the vast plantations. Until African slaves became a more cost-efficient option for colonial landowners, the use of indentured servants was a very much viable alternative.

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

In the mid-1660s, the landlords of the Virginia in North America wanted to make profit as they had already done in Caribbean. They attracted the Caribbean and the English workers with the freedom of religious and the expansion of rights for the English. At the same time, the Tobacco agriculture played an important role in the economic of Virginia. Since the profit was so observable, the settlers acquired land by taking the land of the Native American. They recruited workers from England which was the large part of labor in Virginia until 1680s.