The use of slaves was concentrated in the Chesapeake and Lower South, where the presence of staple export crops rice, indigo and tobacco provided economic rewards for expanding the scale of cultivation beyond the size achievable with family labor.
European immigrants primarily indentured servants tended to concentrate in the Chesapeake and Middle Colonies, where servants could expect to find the greatest opportunities to enter agriculture once they had completed their term of service. While New England was able to support self-sufficient farmers, its climate and soil were not conducive to the expansion of commercial agriculture, with the result that it attracted relatively few slaves, indentured servants, or free immigrants.
These patterns are illustrated in Table 1, which summarizes the composition and destinations of English emigrants in the years to Dunn, Richard S. Greene and J. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Galenson, David W.
White Servitude in Colonial America. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the treacherous journey by sea and the harsh conditions of life in the New World, satisfaction was a modest life as a freeman in a burgeoning colonial economy.
In the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites. However, slave laws were soon passed — in Massachusetts in and Virginia in —and any small freedoms that might have existed for blacks were taken away.
As demands for labor grew, so did the cost of indentured servants. Many landowners also felt threatened by newly freed servants demand for land. Emmer, P. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, Twelve essays dealing with the sweeping history of servant migration and labor, before and after slavery from the 17th through 20th centuries.
Perhaps dated, but a good resource for sweeping treatments of the issue. Galenson, David W. New York: Cambridge University Press, The most thorough economic and demographic analysis of indentured servitude. Emphasis is upon indentured servitude as a system with readily identifiable English origins. Jordan, Don, and Michael Walsh.
Although not written by historians and somewhat strident in tone, this overview can be a useful resource if read in conjunction with more analytical and thoroughly contextualized works. Menard, Russell R. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, Author is among the most important quantitative scholars concerned with labor and migration. This work contains eleven previously published essays that appeared between and Concerned almost solely with British North America.
Morgan, Kenneth. First half of the book appropriately devotes as much attention to indentured servitude and other forms of bound labor as racial slavery in British North America. Good bibliographic essay. Salinger, Sharon. DOI: Beginning in , the assembly attempted to limit such relationships by preventing indentured women from marrying without permission. If the master refused to pay, then the servants were to be whipped. Servants ran away largely because their lives in Virginia tended to be nasty, brutish, and short.
Although they often worked alongside their masters in tobacco fields, they usually lived apart and often under primitive conditions. They worked from dawn until dusk, six days a week through the growing season, which on tobacco and wheat farms could last from as early as February until as late as November. In the meantime, servants—whether seasoned or unseasoned—were treated as property subject to overwork and beatings.
For instance, in Alice Proctor, whom Captain John Smith termed a proper and civil gentlewoman, arranged for her runaway maidservant Elizabeth Abbott to be beaten, and the punishment was so severe that Abbott died. Other female servants were victims of sexual assault. DeVries worried that servants were not treated with appropriate dignity.
John Pott, a Jamestown physician and future Virginia governor, ransomed her freedom for two pounds of beads. On at least two occasions, servants banded together to protest the way they were treated. In both cases, the authorities were notififed before the plans could be carried out, and the conspirators were punished.
According to Berkeley, four of the Gloucester County conspirators were hanged for their actions. The General Assembly did pass legislation aimed at protecting servants from mistreatment.
In , the assembly further directed masters not to make bargains with their servants in an attempt to trick or manipulate them into extended terms of service. Other acts aimed to protect the limited rights of Virginia Indian servants.
Of course, these laws were neither preventative nor always enforced; rather, they reflected the harsh reality of servitude in Virginia, a reality that, as time passed, became less and less distinct from chattel slavery.
Morgan wrote. For much of the seventeenth century, those servants were white English men and women—with a smattering of Africans, Indians, and Irish—under indenture with the promise of freedom. Most historians have explained this shift by citing either social or economic shifts in Virginia beginning around the s. By harnessing that discontent and, in the name of racial solidarity, pointing it in the direction of enslaved Africans, white elites could create a more stable workforce and one that was less likely to threaten their own interests.
Other historians have observed that the flow of English servants began to dry up beginning in the s and fell off dramatically around , forcing planters to rely more heavily on slaves. Slavery did not end indentured servitude, in other words; the end of servitude gave rise to slavery. The historian John C. Over time, as the supply of enslaved Africans increased and their prices decreased, farmers and planters agreed that they preferred a slave for life to a servant who had the hope of freedom.
Even so, indentured servants—particularly those with specialized skills—and convict servants continued to be imported to the colony throughout the eighteenth century. Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave.
Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Skip to content. Contributor: Brendan Wolfe. Origins Servitude had a long history in England, dating back to medieval serfdom. Land and Labor Merchants of Virginia. Tobacco Tamper. A Virginia Indian in a headdress holds a bow in one hand and tobacco leaves in the other.
William Buckland Palladian Room. The formal, Palladian-style room in Gunston Hall features rococo woodwork.
0コメント