Slavery in the 18th century formed a cornerstone in America. Slave trade was so rampant due to the kind of labor they provided. Every colony had slaves from the Northern Wharves of Boston to Charles Town Southern rice plantations. Slavery was a labor system. The demand for cash crops like tobacco, rice, sugar and most common one, cotton led to increase in demand for labor, extensive labor was needed to cultivate these crops. Enslaved Africans were preferred mostly for this kind of labor since they brought special skills and knowledge on crop husbandry and special cultivating skills for crops like rice, which the British found useful. Following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in the year 1607, Indentured servants arrived. This kind of servants provided cheap labor. This were servants who signed a contract which was known as indenture, the servants would be provided for transportation to Virginia and food, shelter and clothing once they arrived in exchange for labor for a certain number of years (Galen son, 2006).
The Indentured servants came to rise due to the demand for people to get to the new world. The masters could exploit people in exchange for provision of labor by getting to the new world in Virginia. Some servants were willing and others were forced. The Virginia Company developed the indentured servant system to attract workers from Britain to America, which was a new world to them. The company would offer them free transportation and once they arrived the company would cater for their needs especially food, shelter and clothing. Servants would work for four to seven years. The Indentured servants existed before slavery began and hence should not be confused with slavery. Laws were established to protect the rights of the servants. The decline of this type of labor came in when slave trade began in 1619 when the first black Africans came to Virginia. The slaves from African replaced those who had served as Indentured servants (Gross, 2008).
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The formulation of laws that protected the servants and the contract that guaranteed freedom and a piece of land after their tenure were some of the changes that Indentured system faced. The major change coming in after the transportation of Africans to America. They replaced British servants and provided labor without any contracts. The issues with indentured servant labor faced were strictness and harshness by their masters. The servants would face punishments for any wrongs committed and their contracts were extended without their consent as punishments for breaking laws like getting pregnant and running away. These were some of the challenges that indentured servants faced in the new world. The system was full of challenges among them were the issues of transportation. Servants transported to America would sometime perish in the oceans and some would go missing (Wolfe & McCartney, 2011).
Among the unintended challenges of Indentured, labor was slave trade in America. As the demand for labor rose, the British colony saw that it was prudent for them to bring up slaves from Africa and provide free labor. Therefore, slavery began when indentured labor became popular in Virginia. Before slave trade became popular, the slaves were given contracts and were guaranteed freedom after a certain period, but that was scrapped away after slave trade became popular and Virginia became the first state to make slavery in its laws. The population of Britons in America grew exponentially with female servants being impregnated by their masters, though they faced an extension of their contracts by two years of labor. Most of the indentured servants after their contract grew to become among the elite Britons in America. Virginia grew and became a city that many people across North America wanted to experience and live there (Wolfe & McCartney, 2011).
References
Galenson, D. W. (2006). The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis. The Journal of Economic History , 44 (01), 1-26. doi:10.1017/s002205070003134x
Gross, R. A. (2008). The Impudent Historian: Challenging Deference in Early America. The Journal of American History , 85 (1), 92. doi:10.2307/2568434
Wolfe, B., & McCartney, M. (2011, December 8). Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Indentured_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia
