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Indentured servitude of Irish and other European peoples occurred in seventeenth-century Barbados, and was fundamentally different from enslavement: an enslaved African's body was owned, as were the bodies of their children, while the labour of indentured servants was under contractual ownership of another person.
Existing slaves became indentured servants. That status was finally ended in 1827 and all the indentured obtained full freedom. [73] A number of acts passed by both the American and the British governments fostered the decline of indentures.
Before the passing of the 1705 Virginia Slave Code Act, African Americans served as indentured servants. [citation needed] [clarification needed] This law, after being passed, transformed servitude into slavery, turning many African Americans from extended servitude to a bonded and forced lifetime commitment to slavery.
It declared children of slaves born after July 4, 1799, to be legally free, but the children had to serve an extended period of indentured servitude: to the age of 28 for males and to 25 for females. Slaves born before that date were redefined as indentured servants and could not be sold, but they had to continue their unpaid labor. [25]
Fifteen years later, the Islands slave population had grown to 20,000, while indentured servants numbered 8,000. There were also more than 1,000 Irish freemen (former indentured servants whose term had expired) living on the island at that time. [10]: 230–1 By 1660, there were 26,200 Europeans and 27,100 African slaves on the Island.
In an early attempt to encourage European settlement, the New Jersey legislature enacted a prohibitive tariff against trafficked slaves to encourage European indentured servitude. [19] When this act expired in 1721, however, Governor William Burnet countered attempts to renew it, since the slave trade had become a lucrative enterprise. [19]
The northern colonies developed their own slave-codes at later dates, with the strictest evolving in the colony of New York, which passed a comprehensive slave code in 1702 and expanded that code in 1712 and 1730. [23] The British Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the slave trade throughout the British Empire.
Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania (1682-1820s): The institution of indentured servitude has a significant place in the history of labor in Pennsylvania. From the founding of the colony (1681/2) to the early post-revolution period (1820s), indentured servants contributed considerably to the development of agriculture and various industries in ...