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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]
Indentured servitude in British America was the prominent system of labor in the British American colonies until it was eventually supplanted by slavery. [1] During its time, the system was so prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of New England were white servants, and that nearly half of total white ...
The first group of 20 or so Africans were brought to Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants. Although most historians believe slavery, as an institution, developed much later, they differ on the exact status of the servitude of Africans before slavery was established legally, as well as differing over the date when this took place. [3]
Though Casor was the first person who was declared an enslaved person in a civil case, there were both black and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude before him. Many historians describe indentured servant John Punch as the first documented slave (or slave for life) in America as punishment for escaping his captors in 1640 ...
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems.It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery.
It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants. [136] [137] After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life.
Slave owners included a comparatively small number of people of at least partial African ancestry in each of the original Thirteen Colonies and later states and territories that allowed slavery; [2] [3] in some early cases, black Americans also had white indentured servants.
Thought to have been an indentured servant, Punch attempted to escape to Maryland and was sentenced in July 1640 by the Virginia Governor's Council to serve as a slave for the remainder of his life. Two European men who ran away with him received a lighter sentence of extended indentured servitude.