Indentured Servants
Indentured Servants
Introduction
At the beginning of the seventeenth century a lot of labor market institutions were created with the purpose of promoting the movement of labor. The majority of plantations in Southern English America, which were involved in the cultivation of tobacco, sugar cane, indigo and rice, began to feel an urgent demand for labor. Modern machinery was definitely providing considerable solutions, though human blood and sweat was still essential for the planting, cultivation and reaping of these commercial crops. As a result, many planters started to gradually introduce the idea of indentured servitude. This system, created because of a need for cheap labor, had to give an impetus to both the master and the servant by the enlargement of the working population of the colonial economy.
The appearance of indentured servitude in America could be traced back to the year 1620, a decade after the Virginia Company settled at Jamestown in North America. Servitude at that time was considered to be a vital institution in the economy and society of a number of British colonies in America. According to the prominent historian of indentured servitude during the colonial period, Abbot Emerson Smith, between one-half and two-thirds of the whole amount of white immigrants, starting from the Puritan migration of the 1630s on down to the Revolution, bore a relation to the indenture (Smith, 1947). Taking into consideration the annual income of a typical British German immigrant, a great number of European migrants were simply incapable of paying for their passage to America. The cost of such passage, for example, overtopped half of the annual receipts of a common British immigrant and a full yearly income of a common German immigrant.
English capital market institutions which existed at that time were apparently insufficient to address that challenge as well. The major embarrassment consisted in the high transactions costs that was issuing loans to each individual person, as well as enforcing them from a distance of nearly three thousand miles. The Virginia Company decided to solve the problem of the deficiency of money of the majority of European migrants by the raising of its own funds and in such a way providing the cost of passage to estimated settlers. In other words, the migrants signed special contracts or indentures and assumed an obligation to work for a certain quantity of years in the future. As a consequence, the migrants received an amount of money necessary for the passage, but were bound to redeem a debt out of their clear profit in America.
In compliance to the mentioned contract, the migrants had to work precisely for the Company in Virginia. In exchange for the passage to the colony, dwelling place, nourishment and freedom dues throughout the duration of the period of service to the Company, the workers automatically transformed into the investors of the enterprise. In view of this, they could also hope for a share in the distribution of the Company’s profits that was expected to happen at the close of seven years (Hughes, 1976). As provided by such system, massive groups of people were supposed to live and work collectively under semiwarlike circumstances. Most recruits did not agree with that arrangement.
Living and working conditions of indentured servants
Moreover, the life of indentured servants proved to be rather harsh and limitative. Conditions for the workers were extremely stressful, which explained why the rate of mortality in the colony turned out to be so high. The hard labor and the inadequate food on community service did not only augment the dissatisfaction in which the workers lived, but were literally killing them. Most migrants were even going to run away and live with the Indians, because they no longer desired to be treated with great severity similarly to slaves.
Only a few indentured servants were capable of earning a living by finishing the terms of their contracts. That number never exceeded forty percent due to harsh living and working conditions. Speaking about female servants, they used to be a source of oppression of the majority of masters.
If any woman became pregnant during indentured servitude, the masters would always add some extra years to the end of her attended time. At the outset of the century, there at least existed an opportunity to several servants for the obtaining of their own lands as citizens with full rights. However, by the end of 1660, big proprietaries raised their claims for the greater part of the best agricultural properties.
The former servants were forcefully superseded to the westward. The mountainous land of that part of the country proved to be less cultivated. In addition, the population there permanently felt threatened from Indians. Later, especially after Bacon’s rebellion in 1676, the majority of plantation owners began to give precedence to constant African slavery that in years past used to ensure their prosperity (Galenson, 1981).
Threatened that such behavior of workers would jeopardize the further survival of their enterprise, the Virginia Company was determined to heatedly react to that crime. There is evidence that in 1612 the colony’s governor rigidly punished a few recaptured laborers. Under authority of the governor, some of the workers had to be hanged or burned, while others were appointed to be staked or shot and killed (Kingsbury, 1933). The utilization of such cruel tortures was seen by the governor as a way of preserving labor discipline, as well as intimidating the rest of the workers who could dare to rebel. One more challenge that managers of the Company were destined to meet, involved the lack of assiduity by their contracted workers. Since the supervising and stimulating of the displeased workers was gradually transforming into a great threat, the Company realized that there was an immediate need to find a new solution to the problem of labors.
At the beginning of 1619, there emerged a new system of indentured servitude. According to it, the Company sent all interested colonists to America at its sole cost, where they could be rented by the independent plantation owners of the colony. The latter took workers on lease from the Company for a twelvemonth at a fixed rate and besides had to provide their maintenance. The Company was expected to score a couple of advantages introducing that improved system.
The dispersion of the groups of colonists was considered to be a productive means of improving workers’ health, as well as their industry. On the one hand, future planters were supposed to provide housing for the new migrants directly upon their arrival. On the other hand, those old growers would undoubtedly train their labors, according to rules that were designed for the workers of the Country. From this perspective, the migrants after the year of such private service would return to the Company appropriately instructed and capable of educating other colonists in a like manner.
The decline of indentured servitude
There exists some obscurity concerning the history of the final evanescence of the quantity of indentured servants in the United States of America. Though solitary instances of the indentured servitude of immigrants could be traced back to the late 1830s, such system began to lose its popularity much earlier.
Most scientists believe that the decline of indentured servitude in North America probably came at the end of the eighteenth century. The question that needs to be answered consists in identifying whether loss in value of indentured servitude could be explained by the overall fall of a number of immigrants to the United States of America or the share of the entire immigration consisted of servants at that time simply declined.
The cancellation of the utilization of indentured labor in America is considered to be the consequence of political action. In 1917 the British government prohibited any transportation of Indians and in such a way promoted servitude for debt (Galenson, 1984). As a consequence of the lawful abolition of the indentured emigration of Indians, the use of compulsory labor in British America that appeared as an original decision to the challenge of the shortage of manpower in the New World was gradually going to the wall as well. Most of the landowners perceived indentured servants as their potential enemies because of their desirable land requirements. Being aware of immediate wants of indentured servitude, the colonial elite looked to African slaves. They were seen by the landlords as more advantageous source of labor, so there started the gradual decline of indentured servitude and the consecutive increase of racial slavery.
Conclusion
In conclusion, indentured servitude proved to become the major reason of the improvement of the colonial economy. Thanks to the international labor mobility that was achieved by the introduction of indentured servitude, there occurred considerable development of rice, tobacco, indigo and sugar production. That group of laborers though, was faced with considerable brutality during its journey to North America, was treated as some kind of property and could even be easily sold or separated from their families. The majority of masters considered indentured servants as bigger threat than slaves, that is why lifelong slavery was soon legalized.
References
Galenson, David W. (1981). White Servitude in Colonial America. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 163-171.
Galenson, David W. (1984). The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis. The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44(1), pp. 1-26.
Hughes, J. R. (1976). Social Control in the Colonial Economy. Charlottesville, pp. 55-57.
Kingsbury, Susan Myra. (1933). The Records of the Virginia Company of London. Washington, D.C., Vol. III, pp. 226-27.
Smith, Abbot Emerson Smith. (1947). Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. Chapel Hill, p. 336.
