Why indentured servants

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Galenson, David W. White Servitude in Colonial America. New York: Cambridge University Press, Grubb, Farley.

McCusker, John J. The Economy of British America: Morgan, Edmund S. Citation: Rosenbloom, Joshua. Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. March 16, Please read our Copyright Information page for important copyright information. Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy. The timing of the Virginia colony was ideal. The Thirty Year's War had left Europe's economy depressed, and many skilled and unskilled laborers were without work.

A new life in the New World offered a glimmer of hope; this explains how one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants. Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues.

While the life of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn't slavery. There were laws that protected some of their rights. But their life was not an easy one, and the punishments meted out to people who wronged were harsher than those for non-servants.

An indentured servant's contract could be extended as punishment for breaking a law, such as running away, or in the case of female servants, becoming pregnant. At any given time there were enslaved Africans working next to free Blacks and European immigrants at Cliveden. The enslaved in urban areas were used as domestic servants, trained as artisans, and even employed.

Indentured servants were not paid wages but they were generally housed, clothed, and fed. Nevertheless, indentured servants, along with normal servants, were often subject to physical abuse. Indentured servitude was enormously common in colonial America. Most redemptioners came from Britain or Germany and were imported to Philadelphia. The majority were young, under twenty, and died before their contracts were up due to the rough conditions of travel and colonial life.

During the 18th century, indentured contracts became less necessary as the costs of immigration to America went down and African slave labor became increasingly attractive to the large landowners of the prospering colonies. Domestic servants generally worked long hours, seven days a week, for relatively modest wages. Their work was physically demanding.

They were clothed, fed, and housed, but had little privacy. Whatever social life they enjoyed in town was limited in the country. The particular duties of each category of domestics cook, maid, waiter, attendant, wash woman, nurse and those who worked outside gardener and coachman were fairly straightforward.