Essay On Indentured Servitude

Indentured servitude was the solution for inexpensive labor. Colonists realized that they had an abundance of land to attend to, but they didn’t have anyone to take care of it. The expense of the passage to the Colonies weighed heavy on the poor or lower class, but not the wealthy upper class. In an effort to attract laborers for working the land the Virginia Company came up with a system called indentured servitude. This system became an important aspect of the colonial economic system. Many skilled and unskilled workers were without work due to the economic decline in Europe resulting from the Thirty Years war. Indentured servitude presented many of those workers with hope for a brighter future than they would otherwise have achieved. The early immigrants who journeyed from England to the American Colonies consisted of nearly two thirds of the total amount of indentured servants. In exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and “freedom dues” they typically worked as indentured servants for 4 to 7 years. Although this life was harsh and restrictive, it wasn’t analogous to slavery. There were laws in place to protect the rights of the indentured servants. Initially, in 1619, when the first black Africans came to Virginia there were no slave laws were in place. They were treated similar to indentured servants. They were

In contrast to the indentured servants who were free after a contracted period of indenture, the slaves posed no economic threat to landowners. Contrary to ethnic European laborers the Africans possessed an obvious racial distinction from the Europeans making escape almost impossible. It was more difficult for slaves to escape and blend into the surrounding population because of the color of their