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Indentured Servants In The Sea Runner By Ivan Dog

1395 Words6 Pages

Based on an actual incident in 1853, Ivan Doig’s The Sea Runners chronicles the escape of four Swedish indentured servants from a fur trade fort in 1850s Russian-America. As the story unfolds and in order to seek opportunity in the New World, many Europeans, including four Swedes, sign on to an indenture with the Russian-American Company (RAC) in New Archangel located in what is modern-day Sitka, Alaska. After two years, the Swedes have enough and plot their escape. After stealing supplies and a native canoe, they set off for the U.S. city of Astoria, 1000 perilous miles south. They face many adversaries, including storms, rocks, angry Russians, and Koloshes (the name given by the Russians to the coastal indigenous people). Only two of the …show more content…

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. The US had indentured servants for the same reasons as the Russians and welcomed many of them in order to get work done cheaply. Using indentured labor, the Russians were successful in increasing their fur trade. However, it would not last. Over-hunting soon resulted in less revenue, leading to the Russians selling the land under the Alaska Purchase of 1867. Back in 1600’s Jamestown, a similar decline occurred due to business moving to slavery exclusively, not ending business itself. Indentured servitude became more expensive in the United States due to the compensation that companies had to give to indentured servants when their term was up. As costs grew, it was inevitable that slavery would be its

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179 Words | 1 Pages

Based on a true incident in 1853, Ivan Doig’s The Sea Runners tells about the escape of four Swedish indentured servants from a fur trade fort in Russian-America. In order to seek opportunity in the new world, many Europeans signed on to an indenture to the Russian-American company in Sitka, specifically, the fur trade. After two years, four Swedish described in the book servants could no longer take it and decide to escape. After stealing supplies and a native canoe, they set off for the U.S. city of Astoria, 1200 miles south.

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757 Words | 4 Pages

The text explains that “Slaves are the Negroes, and their Posterity [children], following the condition of the Mother, according to the Maxim, partus sequitur ventrem.1 They are call’d Slaves, in Respect of the Time of their Servitude, because it is for LifeServants are those which serve only for a few Years, according to the time of their Indenture or the Custom of the Country [colony].”(Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia.). The tone of this text is very blunt and to the point that the reader knows precisely the difference between a slave and a servant and explains how long the terms are for each. Indentured servants were for a few years, and slaves for life.

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377 Words | 2 Pages

The Brirish relied completely on the indentured servitude in the 17th century. So, they hesitated at first to set slavery in the new American colonies. Indentured servants by definition are men and women who signed

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Most of history is seen through the eyes of those of privilege, education, and wealth: royalty, nobility, and merchants. There were those of less fortune or lower class that were educated enough to be able to record their experiences and points-of-view, but they were far and few between. Especially in early America, from immigrants, slaves, free blacks, natives, and indentured servants. “In Defense of the Indians” by Bartolome de La Casa, “An Indentured Servant’s Letter Home” by Richard Frethorne, “Ads for Runaway Servants and Slaves”, “The Irish in America” by John Francis Maguire, and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass are by or about the natives, slaves, indentured servants, and immigrants in the early

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103 Words | 1 Pages

Indentured servants sign a contract agreeing to work for a certain amount of years to get land, tools, and supplies to start of on their own. Which most of the time did not happen since they were treated so poorly that they either died or never got anything in return. The historical significance was that since there were not enough people in the colonies willing to work, indentured servants worked on the land. Also, the use of Indentured servants made people in the Chesapeake colonies accustomed to the use of free labor which turned to African slavery. This was tremendous significance for history.

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176 Words | 1 Pages

The British hesitated to establish slavery in their new American colonies, as they largely relied on indentured servants in the 17th century. Indentured servants were men and women who signed a contract by which they agreed to work for a certain number of years in exchange for transportation to Virginia and, once they arrived, food, clothing, and a place where to live. Adults usually served for four to seven years and children sometimes for much longer, with most working in the colony’s tobacco fields. At first, the Virginia Company of London paid to transport servants across the Atlantic, but with the institution of the headright system in 1618, the company attracted planters and merchants to undertake the cost with a promise of land. At

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290 Words | 2 Pages

Moreover, Indentured servitude began ten years after the first colonial settlement took place in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 as a necessity for cheap labor. Although indenture servitude was fundamental for the colonies economic growth, there were changes in its function. The timing of the first British settlements in North America was ideal since the end of the Thirty-Year war had destroyed Europe’s economy leaving several skilled and unskilled laborers without employment. Point in fact, most of the poor immigrants to the New World signed contracts of servitude to migrate to the colonies. Historian David Galenson state in his research on indenture servitude that there were more than 20,000 indenture immigrants.

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858 Words | 4 Pages

It is an obvious truth that in order to have a functioning society, there must be workers. In modern, first world countries, labors are paid well and are reasonably treated. However, some third world nations use an economic model harkening back to older times—slavery and serfdom. Between 1450 and 1750, European countries in the Caribbean and in the Old World utilized two forms of cheap labor—slavery and serfdom—to line their coffers and feed their populace. In the Caribbean, slavery was preferred; but in Russia, serfdom ruled.

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291 Words | 2 Pages

Often people mistake indentured servants for slavery and though they do have some similarities they are still seen as two different concepts. People believe that indentured servants was a form of slavery and that they were one of the same and that is found to be not true. Indentured servants were given more rights and were seen as a human being (even if they were considered low standard) unlike the slaves in America. Slaves were given no rights at all. Slaves weren’t even considered by society as a human being they were strictly just property and a source of income.

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568 Words | 3 Pages

In his letter he described his life as an indentured servant as one where he has nothing to comfort him but sickness and death. The life that he was living in colonial Virginia was one where you couldn’t escape or else you will be captured. Attempting it could of cause him to die, therefore he hoped his parents brought his escape but with his parents being poor there was no way of escaping the life of an indentured servant. Having no escape as an indentured servant, he wrote to his parents a letter asking that his parents bought out the indenture. In his letter, he wrote that he was trapped in a place filled of diseases that can make any body weak and leave you with lack of comfort and rattled with guilt.

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82 Words | 1 Pages

Before the 1680’s, colonists relied on indentured servitude considering it as a primary source of labor in the colonies. However, after the 1680’s, indentured servitude decreased due to some reasons such as the inability of the servants to survive and to support the harsh living conditions and consequently they died or they run away from their masters and looked for a job and gain their freedom. As a result , a real void was created in the labor market for the

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229 Words | 1 Pages

I would move to Pennsylvania to become a indentured servant because even though you are being a slave and might not have any say in what you will be doing and what harsh treatment that they may be acting towards you .It will be worth the suffering because it will only be for a couple of years to be put to work until you pay for what you owe of them for bring you into the new world. After you are done paying your dues you get to leave free and you are offered a piece of land to live on and do as you please. I would feel like there would be more opportunities to become a slave than to just being a poor famer that has to live off his crops and build with what he has. In some of the sources it is talking about being a servant it is more convincing

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1094 Words | 5 Pages

In the novella the Old Man and the Sea an old man named Santiago taught a boy named Manolin how to fish when the boy was very young. In the book, Santiago and Manolin are usually referred to as “the old man,” and “the boy.” In their time together on and off the skiff they formed a father-son relationship, however, Manolin’s parents said the old man was unlucky, so they made him other fishing arrangements. He went to fish with another boat, and caught three fish in the first week.

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Analysis of “The Seafarer” “The Seafarer” by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon scop, focuses on the themes of personal conflict and the desire to be on a journey. Have you ever experienced love and hate at the exact same time? This Anglo-Saxon elegy reveals the pain of isolation, desire, love, and confusion the sea causes the speaker to feel when he faces fate. The Seafarer has developed a love-hate relationship for his passion.

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In the 1830s, indentured labourers were introduced into the British colonies to replace the freed slaves on the sugar plantation. The rise of wage labour within this period is often explored within the context of the decline of contracted labour, and the developing abolitionist movement that would slowly dismantle the transatlantic slave trade and transatlantic slavery. This was as a result of the depletion of the Taino race within the Caribbean and the need for cheap labour to carry out the manual labour needs in the sugar plantations. Over two million Asians, Africans, Indians and South Pacific islanders signed long-term labour contracts in return for free passage overseas, modest wages, and other benefits in hope of a better life (Craton 1997 p415). These indentured workers came to the West Indies with their different religious beliefs, culture, intellectual concepts and ways of life.

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