There are different reasons for the shift from indentured servitude to slave labor. There are various reasons for the shift like changing patterns of immigration, law against bound servitude, and the rise of. The definition of an Indentured Servant was a person who signed and is bound by a debt to work for another for a specific.
Slaves could be free after they had successfully completed a period of servitude; they could eventually rise to a position of higher ranking within the same society that had once enslaved them. This practice of manipulating people for servitude was later introduced in the early 17th century to English colonies that settled in Virginia in the name of their King were facing almost immeasurable amounts of problems.
The decline of indentured servitude and the rise of chattel slavery were caused by economic factors of the English settlers in the late 17th century. Colonists continually tried to allure laborers to the colony.
The head right system was to give the indentured servant a method of becoming independent after a number of years of service. Colonists chiefly relied on Indentured Servitude, in order to facilitate their need for labor. The decreasing population combined with a need for a labor force, led colonists to believe that African slaves were the most efficient way to acquire a labor force that would satisfy their needs.
Before the 's, indentured servitude was the primary source of labor in the newly developed colonies. There were …show more content… Africans were economically better, due to British control of the slave trade making black labor cheaper.
In the 's, tobacco became the main source of income for most of the colonists. The economic prosperity of the colonies was primarily dependent on the amount of tobacco produced. William Buckland, an architect and a builder who originally came to Virginia as an indentured servant, holds a drafting pen in this portrait by Charles Willson Peale.
On the table in front of Buckland is an architectural sketch of his final commission, the Hammond-Harwood House, in Annapolis, Maryland. The monumental colonnaded building in the background of the painting bears no resemblance to the Annapolis house.
Peale began this portrait in , but Buckland died before it was finished. At the behest of Buckland's daughter, Peale completed the painting fifteen years later. Women were entitled to fifteen bushels of corn and the equivalent of forty shillings. During the seventeenth century, freedom dues were negotiated as part of the indenture. In addition to contract terms, the General Assembly concerned itself with servant behavior. For instance, burgesses were forced to pass laws in response to servants who ran away and to those who, while still under contract, hired themselves out to new masters under better terms.
The — assembly passed a law —subsequently revised in ——requiring that servants carry certificates and punishing any master who hired a servant without proper papers.
In some cases, female servants became pregnant as the result of relationships with male servants. Beginning in , the assembly attempted to limit such relationships by preventing indentured women from marrying without permission.
If the master refused to pay, then the servants were to be whipped. Servants ran away largely because their lives in Virginia tended to be nasty, brutish, and short. Although they often worked alongside their masters in tobacco fields, they usually lived apart and often under primitive conditions. They worked from dawn until dusk, six days a week through the growing season, which on tobacco and wheat farms could last from as early as February until as late as November.
In the meantime, servants—whether seasoned or unseasoned—were treated as property subject to overwork and beatings. For instance, in Alice Proctor, whom Captain John Smith termed a proper and civil gentlewoman, arranged for her runaway maidservant Elizabeth Abbott to be beaten, and the punishment was so severe that Abbott died.
Other female servants were victims of sexual assault. DeVries worried that servants were not treated with appropriate dignity.
John Pott, a Jamestown physician and future Virginia governor, ransomed her freedom for two pounds of beads. On at least two occasions, servants banded together to protest the way they were treated. In both cases, the authorities were notififed before the plans could be carried out, and the conspirators were punished. According to Berkeley, four of the Gloucester County conspirators were hanged for their actions.
The General Assembly did pass legislation aimed at protecting servants from mistreatment. In , the assembly further directed masters not to make bargains with their servants in an attempt to trick or manipulate them into extended terms of service.
Other acts aimed to protect the limited rights of Virginia Indian servants. Of course, these laws were neither preventative nor always enforced; rather, they reflected the harsh reality of servitude in Virginia, a reality that, as time passed, became less and less distinct from chattel slavery.
Morgan wrote. For much of the seventeenth century, those servants were white English men and women—with a smattering of Africans, Indians, and Irish—under indenture with the promise of freedom.
Most historians have explained this shift by citing either social or economic shifts in Virginia beginning around the s.
By harnessing that discontent and, in the name of racial solidarity, pointing it in the direction of enslaved Africans, white elites could create a more stable workforce and one that was less likely to threaten their own interests. Other historians have observed that the flow of English servants began to dry up beginning in the s and fell off dramatically around , forcing planters to rely more heavily on slaves.
Slavery did not end indentured servitude, in other words; the end of servitude gave rise to slavery. The historian John C. Over time, as the supply of enslaved Africans increased and their prices decreased, farmers and planters agreed that they preferred a slave for life to a servant who had the hope of freedom. Even so, indentured servants—particularly those with specialized skills—and convict servants continued to be imported to the colony throughout the eighteenth century.
Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Skip to content. Contributor: Brendan Wolfe. Origins Servitude had a long history in England, dating back to medieval serfdom.
Land and Labor Merchants of Virginia. Tobacco Tamper. A Virginia Indian in a headdress holds a bow in one hand and tobacco leaves in the other. William Buckland Palladian Room. The formal, Palladian-style room in Gunston Hall features rococo woodwork. June The English Parliament passes the Ordinance of Labourers, declaring that all men and women under the age of sixty who do not practice a craft must serve anyone requiring their labor.
January 12, The English Parliament passes the Statute of Artificers, which compiles and revises years' worth of law regarding indentured servitude. The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor.
The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it. With passage to the Colonies expensive for all but the wealthy, the Virginia Company developed the system of indentured servitude to attract workers.
Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy. The timing of the Virginia colony was ideal. The Thirty Year's War had left Europe's economy depressed, and many skilled and unskilled laborers were without work.
A new life in the New World offered a glimmer of hope; this explains how one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.
Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues. While the life of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn't slavery.
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