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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 ...
Indentured servitude in continental North America began in the Colony of Virginia in 1609. [1] Initially created as means of funding voyages for European workers to the New World, the institution dwindled over time as the labor force was replaced with enslaved Africans.
British plantation owners in North America and the Caribbean also needed a workforce for their cash crop plantations, which was initially filled by indentured servants from Britain before transitioning to Native American and West African slave labor. [87] During this period, the English established colonies in Barbados in 1624 and Jamaica in ...
The French colonies in North America were the only portion of the Americas to have an effective slave code applied from the center of the empire. King Louis XIV applied the Code Noir in 1685, and it was adopted by Saint-Domingue in 1687 and the French West Indies in 1687, French Guiana in 1704, Réunion in 1723, and Louisiana in 1724.
Early on, labor shortages were solved temporarily by indentured servitude; however, this system eventually proved inefficient. Because Native Americans proved independent and difficult to enslave for forced cultivation and indentured servants were only temporary, growers in the South turned to African slave importation to meet their demand for ...
The claimants to headrights could receive grants for men, women and children since anyone could become an indentured servant. [3] Early documentation from the Virginia Company seems to suggest that a landowner could receive a headright even if the indentured servant whose trip they sponsored did not make it to Virginia alive. [10]
Emancipation via indentured servitude [ edit ] To be sure, indentured servitude represented for the formerly enslaved an improvement over slavery itself; those indentured could not be forcibly relocated, children and other family members could not be taken away by force, and they could no longer be whipped or raped.