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History of slavery in the united states essay
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The Chesapeake Bay area used indentured servants. Indentured servants were workers who came from Europe to work for a person for a tenure up to seven years, at which point he would be set free, and possibly given land as a reward. The Carolinas imported slaves from West Africa to develop the land and work on the large plantations. New York used a system called tenancy: dividing up large plots of land into smaller plots of land that would be rented out on a long-term basis. The Middle Colonies used a combination of tenancy and servitude to provide the labor necessary for development.
Even though they were European, indentured servants were not treated as fellow European workers, but as slaves; these indentured servants weren’t seen by the RAC as people, but as tools. “Any workman within an enterprise such as the Russian-American Company amounted to something like one slat in a water wheel. Laboring in a circle, a damp one at that” (Doig 165, 1982). The working conditions were brutal, according to historians Steven Hahn and S.B. Okun. In Jamestown, indentured servants were viewed as property, and could be bought and sold at a moment’s notice.
Indentured servants were people who were granted their passage to America in exchange for their labor for up to seven years. Bacon’s Rebellion dramatically changed the ratio of indentured servants to slaves in the colonies. Socially, the bringing in of slaves made for more diversity
Economically, the colonies would stay the same in some ways and change in others. In the 1650, indentured servants were more commonly used. Indentured servant would work for four to seven years in exchange for a passage to America and freedom afterwards. As stated in the textbook, “About 80 percent of the immigrants to
Indentured servants, were by all accounts, the main source of labor in the seventeenth century. The labor force was mainly needed for the newly discovery of the cash crop that was tobacco. It was a plant that need a lot of man power to be harvested and transported to port to be shipped back to England. “At first they turned to their overpopulated country for labor, but English indentured servants brought with them the same haphazard habits of work as their masters.” Indentured service being described as haphazard is an understatement; uprising.
They worked as indentured servants at first and later became slaves in the
For many years, since the first colonies, people have used slaves as free labor and to get the work they needed done without paying them. Slaves were free. They had owners. Since they were owned, no one cared how they were treated. Slaves were not treated as humans.
During the 1670’s, farmers in Virginia struggled to profit as they depended on tobacco for a source of income. In this early period of colonization, indentured servitude was the most common source of cheap labor. Critically acclaimed author and historian, Lerone Bennett Jr., described this labor system as “the big planter apparatus and a social system that legalized terror against black and white bondsmen” (Bennet). Tied into service bythe promise of land, indentured servants could not profit off their work. By doing so, servants were forced into a continuous cycle of service to provide for themselves and their families.
there is a difference in rights that slaves and indentured servants have. Indentured servants have legal rights that can be used in court against their masters. Where slaves have zero rights at all, no matter if they try to take their issues to court to dispute, it will fall on deaf ears. But in the beginning, there was a thin line that almost made indentured servants and slaves equal. But as time went by that line slowly turned into a canyon that split the two apart.
In the early 1600’s, indentured servants, usually someone from a poor class in England would sell their labor for a term of four to seven years for the opportunity to travel across the Atlantic and be funded by a master/farmer. After reviewing “A Contract for Indentured Service (1635)” the blank contract I referenced indicates a term of four to seven years to be completed. The contract promises to pay the servant in meat, drinks, apparel and lodging during his time as an indentured servant. After the term is completed the master is required to provide his former servant: clothing, three barrels of corn, and fifty acres of land. The risks that potential indentured servants had to consider when migrating to the American colonies were the bad
The Enclosure Act drove many English people to become indentured servants because they had no means of survival with very little land. These colonies differed for the reason for leaving England and the emigrants who settled in these
Basicly, the indentured servants were regularly from England, and did not have money to sail to Virginia. So then they had to become a servant to pay the voyage. The servants worked for a “master” for a period of time under a contract. They usually worked on tobacco. They were given food and a place to live.
The subjugation of indentured servants to their masters was nearly identical to that of slaves under early colonial law, however the rights held by both groups of unfree laborers differs
Indentured servitude was a form of cheap labor equal to that of slavery. In the 1800s and into the early 1900s, immigrants from the eastern world were hired into low paying jobs to pay their debt to the wealthy bby working on plantations in terrible working conditions. The people were to sign a contract that bound them to work for up to 15 hours a day for a number of years until their fee for traveling to the new world was paid. The majority of the people That were indentured servants were from India and other Eastern parts of Asia this was due to the spread of the Industrial Revolution brought about by Western Europe.
One of the major similarities between the slaves and indentured workers are their living conditions. Masters were obligated to provide housing for both groups. Both groups were housed on the property of the master. The quarters shared similar features such as being poorly constructed, small and overcrowded, usually had no windows, lack of proper ventilation and with little to no furniture. plantationlifeduringslavery.wikispaces.com