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Indentured servitude in colonial america
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Indentured servitude in colonial america
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The typical life of an indentured servant was not a convenient one. Their journeys to the Americas were miserable. The servants were packed into large ships carrying thousands of people as well as, tools, food, etc. Not only were the people densely packed, there were various diseases flooding the ships, and many people would die from them. “I witnessed . . . misery in no less than 32 children in our ship, all of whom were thrown into the sea.” (Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750). Once the indentured servants arrived to their destination, they would sign a contract in agreement to serve their designated master. There was no relationship between a master and a servant. It was in agreement that the servant would work
William Moraley’s presentation of his time spent in colonial America, as he conveyed in his autobiography The Infortunate, depicts his experiences as an indentured servant. Moraley faced arduous tasks throughout his time as a laborer only to have no opportunities as soon he becomes free. Through Moraley’s autobiography, a deeper context is shown of what most American colonist’s life consisted of since a majority of migrants who traveled to the colonies were in a similar situation. These bound servants and poor laborers were accustomed to harsh restrictions by the beneficiaries of their labor and were mitigated of any chance to acquire land or a stable occupation in Colonial America because of the social and political standings of the upper
Indentured servant - Someone who agreed to work for a number of years in exchange for the cost of a voyage to North America
By the 18th century, Pennsylvania was becoming home for American Development. Many people that were drawn to Pennsylvania were servants whether, for sometimes 4 years or however long, it took to pay off debt for their travel across the Atlantic. If they weren’t servant, they were slaves who almost had no chance of freedom. Servants had a chance to become free after paying off their debts with work, but not the same for slaves.
Even if the ill-treatments did not manifest into physical or verbal abuse, the servants were exposed to crude surroundings. Among many factors included being malnourished, sleep deprivation, and/or overburden with hard manual labor. The indentured servants were treated like property instead of hard-working human beings. They could be bought and sold at any time.
Before delving into the specifics of enslavement conditions in the New World, a peek into the slavery
Indentures -- is a labourer under contract of the employer in exchange for an extension to the period of their indenture, which could thereby continue indefinitely (normally it would be for seven years). In other cases, indentured servants were subject to violence at the hands of their employers in the homes or fields in which they worked.
In Complaint of an Indentured Servant, Sprig writes a letter to her father back home telling him about the poor living conditions and treatment she was receiving. Elizabeth Sprig, however, didn’t have a strong relationship with her father during this time, it was actually far from that. She begins by asking her father for forgiveness because she feels like she might never leave from the torment. She tells him that the treatment she and the other English indentured servant suffer is beyond the comprehension of those back in England. Sprig begins to talk about how little they had to eat and how little they had to wear. She tells her father about the scarce amount of Indian corn and salt for their meals, and how they were almost naked because of the lack of clothes they received. The indentured servant had no shoes, nor stockings to wear and also no place to sleep. They were lucky to get offered a blanket to wrap up in on the ground. If they did something against owners, they were tied up and beaten as if they were animals. Elizabeth Sprig begs for some compassion from her father by asking him to simply sending her some clothes and a letter back. She even goes as far as telling him how to send these items over by ships. This was the treatment that almost every woman received when arriving in the new world. Women who found
Physical abuse by plantation owners towards both their servants and slaves was common. One account by Thomas Gates in a General Court of Colonial Virginia document about Elizabeth Abbot, an indentured servant, stated that “she had been sore beaten and her body full of sores and holes very dangerously raunckled and putrified both above her wast and uppon her hips and thighs” (General Court of Colonial Virginia). In fact, such abuse towards servants and slaves was so common that the state of Virginia had to make laws for such cases. Unfortunately, colonial governments did not consider corporal punishment illegal. Thus adding to the brutality endured by persons in captivity and servitude during the colonial era. “Moderate corporal punishment inflicted
There are many aspects contributing to the rise of slavery and decline of indentured servitude. The beginning of slavery started when Columbus invaded Hispaniola and enslaved the Arawaks . This was the first time people thought to enslave people against their will for labor. Hard labor and diseases nearly killed off their race, essentially concluding that they were no longer available candidates for labor. Indentured servitude was used as bait to lure people into enslavement and eventually began to fade due to multiple historical events, such as The Bacon Rebellion . African Americans became an easy target because they were less prone to diseases and their bodies were capable of such intense and difficult labor. As slavery began to rise in popularity certain laws were passed through Congress that supported slavery.
The role of an indentured servant in the 1700s was not a glamorous one. They came to the New World knowing that, for a time, they would be slaves for someone they did not know and the risk of disease and death was high, but the opportunity that laid ahead of them after their time of servitude was worth everything to these settlers of the New World. They came to America for the same reasons as all of the other settlers. Religious freedom, land, wealth, and a new start were motives for both settlers and indentured servants but the one thing separating most settlers from the indentured servants was that they could afford their voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Indentured servants couldn’t buy their ticket to the New World, but that didn’t stop
Slaves were then transported to the Americas on a journey called the middle passage which lasted about six weeks. These ships were very unsanitary and cramped often carrying three hundred slaves. Once onboard the ship, men and women were stripped naked and shackled two-by-two. They could either be packed loosely or tight. Either way the ship had terrible hygiene, often nowhere to go to the bathroom. Also the slaves were hardly given any food, so many of the slaves went hungry. These factors contributed to many suicide attempts while onboard.
Indentured Servants helped the colonies progress their population. England at the time was over populated, and jobs were hard to find. So many people that could not afford the boat trip over to America offered themselves as to be an indentured servant for a period of time. This contractual term can last from between four to seven years. Many colonists preferred having indentured servants over slaves, cause they also helped ward off Native Americans from attacking settlers. The one big draw back of indentured servant was that they usually did not make it pass the first year of their contract.
Throughout his account of San Domingos' slavery, James maintains the perseverance of the humanity of the slave population. The slaves did not succumb to their conditions by becoming inanimate objects devoid of any human qualities. Although the "majority of the slaves accommodated themselves to [the] brutality by a profound fatalism and a wooden stupidity before their masters", the slaves still maintained their intelligence and creativity. "The difficulty was that though one could trap them like animals, transport them in pens, work them alongside an ass or a horse and beat both with the same stick, stable them and starve them, they remained, despite their black skins and curly hair, quite invincibly human beings; with the intelligence and resentments of human beings" (11-12). Moreover, it "was this intelligence which refused to be crushed, these latent possibilities, that frightened the colonists, as it frightens the whites in Africa to-day" (18).
In modern time, traveling by boat is very much easy, and most people prefer it now for vacations and long trips through the sea.What most of us would recognize and identify this as a cruz. Though we have evolved, traveling by boat wasn't always so pleasant for many in the past. In the early 10th century when the European’s started traveling to the America, it was a struggle to travel by boat. It was hard to survive the voyage over seas for a several reasons according to Gottlieb Mittelberger.
conditions aboard ship were dreadful. The maximum number of slaves was jammed into the hull, chained to forestall revolts or suicides by drowning. Food, ventilation, light, and sanitatio...