Preview

Indentured Servants In The 1600s

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
368 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Indentured Servants In The 1600s
Journal Entry
During the early years of the 1600’s many Europeans and Africans moved over from England and became indentured servants. Indentured servants were employed by wealthy people and were used mainly for cheap labor. Some types of labor consisted of working in the fields and helping farmers.
Around the 1680’s is when the employment of indentured servants slowly dropped. The reason for the drop was due to the rise of slavery. This was masterminded by European and euro-American colonist who created a slave based community. There were even laws that made slavery race dependent.
There were some differences between indentured servants and slaves. Indentured servants were used for cheap labor. They communicated easily with

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the early 1600s, companies that were given charters by the British crown established colonies in North America. These colonies served to provide the mother country with raw materials. Previously, the only people who could afford come to America were wealthy people. With the idea of indentured servitude developed by joint-stock companies, anyone willing to work for a certain number of years could come to the New World. This system worked for numerous years, however, according to a graph of servants and slaves per probate inventory in York County, Virginia, from the years 1665 to 1695, the number of indentured servants decreased immensely while, from 1680 to 1895, the number of slaves increased. (Doc 1) The graph serves to show the progression…

    • 197 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    world to be sold to business owners. Their wishes for cheap, reliable labor were answered. As the economic status of England improved, the amount of indentured servants being imported to the colonies declined and many of those who worked off their servitude became free men and women which left gaps in the work force which was gradually being replaced by African slaves. By the 1720’s, other forms of laborers emerged. Apprentices, who learned trades from master craftsmen, convicts of Britain’s overcrowded prisons and immigrants known as “redemptioners”, those who worked a deal with shipping agents by…

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The indentured servants mostly came from Great Britain. Looking for new space, life, and opportunity. The catch was the fact that these people had no money to pay their way into the New found land. So, that turned into people looking for a way to get over here. So people thought and talked about working off a debt, if someone were to pay their way over here. I personally think that this was a trick for the most part, but I don’t have any factual information to support that claim. Then, it came a time where people stopped coming to work and the farms grew rapidly. With this going on the agricultural…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Howard Zinn Critique

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Indentured servants were people of a lower economic class who worked for people of a higher economic background. These servants worked for a given amount of time, usually between five and seven years and either worked for money, food, shelter, or freedom. Indentured servants were originally made up of mostly young white males who were trading their time in prison or their poverty for time working as a servant.…

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Money and Power are the two main factors towards the transformation indentured servants to slaves in Early the United States. Slaves were cheaper and easier to “take care of” compared to having an indentured servant. The growth of agriculture at this time had a good deal of farmland/plantation owners wanting to become the best; The one that makes the most money or the one that has the most powers. From 1603 to 1740, within the time span of 137 years change has started laws being created, the labor forces started to shift and a rebellion was forming.…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Byzantine Empire

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages

    1. ____________________indentured servants_____________________________ from England; Typically poor men who agreed to work for a land owner for ____4-7______ yrs in exchange for travel to…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The practice of involuntary labor in Colonial America operated from the early 17th century to late 18th century. The two most popular forms of involuntary labor were indentured servitude and slavery. Often indentured servants are of European origin either carrying out their sentences or paying off their passages. The Experience of Bondage: Gottlieb Mittelberger’s account, 1754, was written by a German schoolmaster about his voyage to Philadelphia as an indentured servant. In his account, he describes the horrid conditions faced by voyagers from the tightly packed spaces, sickness and the purchasing process of servants. At the same time, the labor system of slavery was in practice. The advertisement of runaway slaves in the sections, Wanted:…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Indentured servants also worked on plantations. The difference between an indentured servant and a slave is that Indentured servants chose to work on a plantation. Meanwhile, slaves didn't have a choice to work on a plantation. There are many differences and similarities of Indentured servants and slaves. Some similarities would be that they both didn't have freedom.…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the late 1700’s and 1800’s the systematic importation of African slaves from their native continent across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, also known as the Atlantic slave trade, took place. With the demand for rice, sugar, and tobacco growing higher, the demand for labor grew with it. There different forms of slavery and different treatment of slaves around the world. The biggest contrast in slavery was the slavery in North America and South America.…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although Indentured servitude and slavery have similarities they are also quite different. Indentured servants were young men looking to work in exchange for land or money in America. Slaves were brought to America and forced to work for the colonists receiving nothing in return. Indentured servants and slavery were both groups that were involved in America’s first colonization and although they were frequently taken advantage of, they were very important in building this new nation’s…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Indentured Servitude is very different from slavery. The reason was that for Indentured Servitude, was where you had to choose to work for a employer if required, you had to sign a contract and you would work for a certain amount of time. While the slavery is where you have been born to work your whole life and so are your kids and their kids, etc.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery In The 1500s

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Every great empire has always started with the foundation of slavery. Slavery was used as a cheap reliable source for labor. Culture also played a major role in helping survive the harshness of life. Nevertheless the dynasty of the ones who lived before the 1500s are still remained uncertain. Culture is defined as the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Indentured Servants

    • 1063 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Poor English citizens signing their lives away through a contract; as shown in document one produced indentured servants. The very first line states ‘This indenture made’- made, almost as if they have been transformed from the person they currently are into nothing more than a servant to their master. ‘’In such service and imployment’ and ‘shall there imploy him, according to the custome of the Countrey in the like kind’ states that the servant must do whatever the master asks of him. There is nothing in the contract to protect the servant, the master is fully able to take advantage of the power he now has over his servant. Although the servant is promised that master will ‘pay for his passing, and to find him with meat, drink, apparel and lodging, with other necessaries during the said terme, and at the end of the said terme, to give him one whole yeers provision of corne, and fifty acres of land’, there is nothing in the contract stating that it will be made sure the servant gets everything he is promised. In Document 3, we see the harsh reality of servitude.…

    • 1063 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    CCOT Migration Essay

    • 645 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Slave Trade Act of 1807, and the Slave Abolition Act of 1833 put forth…

    • 645 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The causes of the development of the institution of slavery in the period from 1607 to 1750 are due to the growth of farming and the necessity of manual labor to produce a profit. Document 1 leads to this as it shows the changes from 1637-1705 between indentured servants and slaves as the necessity for slaves grew. The most notable dates of this graph are the increase of Servants in 1657-1664 and the fall of these Servants and the growing need for slaves. During this time indentured servants were people who were willing to work to obtain profit mainly hoping to earn enough profit to own land themselves, landowners needed manual labor as they were not fit nor ready to work on their land, so they decided to purchase multiple signed contracts…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays