Indentured Servitude Essay

Labor in the British colonies in America consisted of African slaves who were typically permanently enslaved as well as white indentured servants who worked for a specific amount of time and according to conditions outlined in a legal document, as well as several combinations of the two categories. Both the indentured servants and the slaves were essential to the growth of the colonial economy and society as a whole because of their work. The rapid growth of the farming economy led to a significant

1600s. However, indentured servitude was very common before the 1680s. “For half a century or so after 1620, most laborers were indentured servants; only a small proportion were African slaves” (Clark, Hewitt, Brown& Jaffee, 2007 p64). Indentured servants were people who signed an indenture, a contract by which they agreed to work for a serval number of years in exchange for transportation to colonies; in addition, they would get food, clothing, land, and freedom. The first Indentured servants in British

Indentured Servants 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

profit in the new economy and the greediness of the elite caused the need for long-lasting labor force. Whether it was indigenous labor, indentured servitude or other forms of labor, the American colonists were unable to sustain these types of labor and thus created a more racially segregated labor system through African slavery. The system of indentured servitude first arrived to America in the early 17th century and was the main cause for the influx of white laborers at the time to the country.

Indentured Servitude as a Catalyst for Colonial Success The colonies were better able to adapt to the New World and all of its’ trials through the use of indentured servants. Indentured servitude gave colonists access to the new freedoms they may not have had otherwise in Britain while giving colonies such as Virginia a chance at success. The New World involved challenges that the colonists never could have imagined including but not limited to disease, crop differences, and Native Americans with

Indentured servants where men and women who signed a contract to work for a certain number of years, usually between four and seven, in exchange for transportation to the colonies. The Chesapeake Bay colonies, Virginia and Maryland, where especially condition to use indentured servants. During this essay I will explain why the Chesapeake Bay colonies were in such need of the servants and why eventually they turned to slavery to fill the void left by the indentured servants. In the Chesapeake Bay

lives outside the frame of enslavement." Indentured servitude was technically a fancy way to call someone a slave. When the first settlers came to North America and realized they didn 't know how to survive on this unknown land, their only solution was to find someone else to figure it out for them. Because early Americans didn 't want to anything for themselves, the indentured servitude system was created, indentured servitude led to the

Slavery was caused by economic factors of the English settlers in the late 17th century. Planters primarily relied on indentured servitude, in order to facilitate their need for labor. Before the 1680's, Indentured Servitude was the primary source of labor in the newly developed colonies but after the 1680's, the population of the Indentured Servants decreased, exponentially. The Seventeenth century in Virginia was an unruly and rebellious time as the labour force, being both white and some black

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

United States was the permissible establishment of human entrapment, predominantly of Africans and African Americans that existed in the 18th and 19th century. During the 18th and 19th century, slavery is viewed in two different aspects; indenture servitude and chattel slavery which is the most common form of slavery which is taught in schools and even still happening today. Chattel slavery is the idea that the vast majority have on their mind when they think about the sort of slavery that existed in