Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Indentured servitude was a method of increasing the number of colonists, especially in the English and later British colonies. Voluntary migration and convict labor only provided so many people, and since the journey across the Atlantic was dangerous, other means of encouraging settlement were necessary.
Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were frequently subject to physical punishment, and did not receive legal favor from the courts. Female indentured servants in particular might be raped and/or sexually abused by their masters. If children were produced the labour would be extended by two years. [14]
Some historians such as Edmund Morgan and Lerone Bennett have suggested that indentured servitude provided a model for slavery in the 17th-century Crown colonies. In practice, indentured servants were teenagers in England whose fathers sold their labor voluntarily for a period of time (typically four to seven years), in return for free passage ...
The first indentured servants arose centuries ago out of necessity and desperation on both sides of the Atlantic. An unskilled laborer from pre-industrial England might need to save up multiple ...
Many immigrants to the colonies came as indentured servants, with someone else paying their passage to the Colonies in return for a promise of service. At the end of his service, according to the contract, the indentured servant usually would be granted a sum of money, a new suit of clothes, land, or perhaps passage back to England.
White indentured servants were also common in this region early in its settlement, gradually being replaced by African slaves by the latter half of the seventeenth century due to improved economic conditions in Europe and the resulting decrease in emigration to the Chesapeake region. Indentured servants were people who signed a contract of ...
Prior to 1660, almost all immigrants to the English colonies of North America had migrated freely, though most paid for their passage by becoming indentured servants. [75] Improved economic conditions and an easing of religious persecution in Europe made it increasingly difficult to recruit labor to the colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The very first Irish settlers - Francisco Maguel and Dionis Oconor - arrived in Jamestown with the First and Second supplies, respectively. [46] Most Irish immigrants to the Americas traveled as indentured servants, with their passage paid for a wealthier person to whom they owed labor for a period of time. Some were merchants and landowners ...