Essay On Indentured Servants In Colonial Virginia

Indentured Servitude to Slavery in Colonial Virginia The first two centuries of colonial Virginia exhibit a significant transformation of the workforce that occupied the land. The beginning of the 17th century was marked by the first settlements in the colony, such as Jamestown, that ushered in an era of indentured servitude. In the end of the 17th century through the start of the 18th century, this labor transitioned to racial slavery. As the American tobacco industry prospered for the rich, the number of indentured servants began to fall, causing the direct development of slavery in colonial Virginia. The production of tobacco in Virginia was the first factor in the transition to racial slavery. After 1617, when the first shipment of

Extremely difficult and tedious effort was required to grow the crop, but it made high profits due to the demand arising in Europe. Fortunately for the Virginian landowners who could not manage the high workload themselves, lower class members of the English social class were in search of a promising future and looked to the Americas as a sign of hope. They were met with the opportunity to sign away the next few years of their lives to labor, in exchange for transportation across the Atlantic Ocean and land ownership after their completed term. Known as indentured servants, many experienced unbearable natural and physical conditions that would ultimately take their lives, and few saw their terms to completion and gained land in the New World (Lecture, Hacker). Demands for tobacco and the use of indentured servants

The question of class inequity and the dwindling amount of English servants arriving in Virginia amounted to the second factor in the transition from indentured servants to slaves. The owners of farmable land in the booming tobacco industry grew richer than they could have hoped for in the New World, while indentured servants remained poor and hardly got land worth more than themselves. This eventually caused a class divide in Virginia. As the divide grew, tensions worsened until they culminated in Bacon’s Rebellion. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion made of indentured servants, slaves, and freemen against the elite class after they would not support their efforts to fight the Native Americans (p. 56, Chapter 3). Although the rebellion begins on a racist fight against the natives for land, it becomes an outward class struggle originating from the disgruntled and poor (Lecture, Hacker). To top it off, in 1682 an English law was passed to keep “spirits” from sending English citizens to the Americas as indentured servants for their own profit (p.57, Chapter 3). The struggles between the Virginian class system, and the horrendous types of work the indentured servants were being forced to complete resulted in less of the English population willingly immigrating to the Americas. After the law was passed, servants did not come unwillingly either. The lack of indentured servants