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Similarities Between Slavery And Indentured Servitude

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Is it right for an individual to own another individual? The answer would be no. However, in the early 17th and 18th centuries, slavery and being an indentured servant was a cost effective system which wealthy land owners used to help boost the colonial economy. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, slavery is the submission to a dominating influence, and indentured servitude is a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for another person for a specified time; especially in return for payment or travel expenses and maintenance. Slavery and indentured servitude both had a lot of similarities to them.
For example, both groups of people were considered personal property. Their descendants could be sold or inherited. The laws were the same for both male and female of both groups. They both worked under extreme hardships and difficulties. …show more content…

For example, indenture servants were immigrants from Europe who came to America seeking a better life. As oppose to slaves that were taken from their homeland and forced into slavery. Second, indentured servants had contracts where they had to work four to seven years in exchange for paid passage, room, loggings, and freedom dues. As oppose to slavery, slaves were forced into ships, chain and beaten into submission to go to America and become cheap labor for a life time. During this time, the growth of rice, tobacco, an indigo was on the rise. This had created a great need for wealthy land owners to find labor to harvest the crops. In 1607, indentured servitude was created in Jamestown by the Virginia Company. The need to harvest the crops was so much in demand that the Virginia Company created a system where they would attract cheap labor to work the plots of land. It was also during this time, that the European immigrants were desperate for a change; after being left to die in failing European economy due to the

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In fact, in 1650 indentured servitude was the more common variety of labor workers the colonists relied on. In the text it states, “About 80 percent of the immigrants to the Chesapeake during the seventeenth century came as indentured servants” (Roark 60). This evidence exhibits the fact that slaves weren’t exclusively

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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

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In the time period from 1607 to 1750, the economies of Virginia and Massachusetts began to develop. In Virginia, during the colonial times, it was a tobacco growing colony with a large population of tobacco planters. The spread of the tobacco cultivation increased the demand for workers and led Chesapeake planters to buy large amounts of slaves. They chose not to use indentured servants because African slaves offered more advantages to the owners. This led to a great increase in slave population along with the growth of tobacco planters in Virginia; an upper class of wealthy landowners with control emerged.

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Thomas Paine was opposed to slavery due to the quote he said. "Slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has the right to reclaim it, however often sold." He goes on to say the African slaves were forced into the slavery due to the Europeans bring liquor to there land, bribing one against another, and hiring tribes to fight other tribes. Thomas Paine was an original member of the Anti Slavery formed in Philadelphia.

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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

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During Spanish colonization of the Americas, the conquerors were often granted land, often a town or village, which was filled with people native to the land. Conquerors were then able to not only tax the native people, but use them as a type of free labor source. However, both of these labor systems have many similarities and differences as well. Slave

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President's Views on Slavery James Madison was the fourth president of the United States, who owned many slaves and did not free any of them. When James Madison died, he still owned around one hundred slaves. As a third generation slave owner, Madison did not see slavery as evil.

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Virginian landowners did not see the need to incorporate slavery nor wanted to participate in the practices that occurred in the West Indies since most of the Virginians were individuals who wanted to settle in Virginia with their families, rather than the businessmen who would return to England like it was in the Caribbean (Takaki 52). Eventually, due to the boom of tobacco as a commodity and the potential of its production overseas, more servants were needed to provide for the demand of labor. Some estates valued their indentured blacks more than their white counterparts, Takaki provides documents showing a landowner’s inventory and the differences in their production in comparison between black and white servants; this fluctuation can be attributed to blacks becoming indentured for significantly longer periods then those white servants from Ireland (Takaki 55-56). Because of the lack of regulation with indentured servants and the disenfranchisement of blacks, the trend began to shift from blacks indentured for life to selling blacks as property; during this period of time, wealthy landowners gained control of Virginian Assembly and pushed any ordinance that would benefit their business’s (Takaki 58).

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In 1607, the first wave of colonial settlers arrived in Virginia and began to establish Jamestown. Many of the new settlers came from wealthy families never performing a day of manual labor. With agricultural farming, being the revenue source of the new colonial settlers there would soon be a great demand for labor. Contracts of indentures were expiring and with much devastation in England, there was a shortage of English servants.

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The indentured servants came to the new world because they were in search of better opportunities and a better lifestyle. Its emergence in the seventeenth century in Virginia can be seen as a development convenient to the circumstances surrounding the colony. Indentured servants were able to come to the new world and work for four to seven years and as a result be able to gain their freedom and headright land. It was seen that many of indentured servants had more rights over what the slaves had. For example, a man named Anthony Johnson an African-American, lived in Chesapeake and came to Virginia in 1621 to work as a servant.

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Indentured servants were enrolled in a strong contract binding them to a master from the courts. These men and or woman would sign contracts to go to the new world and work for their master for five to seven years. A lot of things were promised in this contract once it was completed, for example, a trip over to the new world, a new skill, clothes, food, and shelter. These servants were still subjects of the king, but they were treated similar to slaves. Unlike slaves, the indentured servants had a release date to look forward to.

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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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The difference between indentured servants and slaves were that indentured servants were bound to a contract and had certain laws and rights such as; freedom dues” and the fact that over a certain amount of time indentured servants become free and become a part of society. Whereas slaves were bound to the master they were sold to, had to work on that masters land for the rest of her/his life, they were given no salary, were never a part of society, were seen and had to work against his/her will.

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The beginning of the 17th Century marked the practice of slavery which continued till next 250 years by the colonies and states in America. Slaves, mostly from Africa, worked in the production of tobacco and cotton crops. Later , they were employed or ‘enslaved’ by the whites as for the job of care takers of their houses. The practice of slavery also led the beginning of racism among the people of America. The blacks were restricted for all the basic and legally privileged rights.

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But the majority of the young white males who came to Jamestown were poor, uneducated, and unskilled. They had no families and no means of supporting themselves, which meant that they caused a potential problem to the political and economic challenge for stability. Since these men had no skills, they would become indentured servants, trading their labor for free passage to the colonies. Elite landowners used this unfree labor to their advantage by growing cash crops like tobacco and exporting their agricultural products, eventuating establishing Jamestown as a boomtown. Once the colony had become stabilized, the first representative legislature general assembly met in the Jamestown church in 1619.

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