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Indentured servitude

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An indenture signed by Henry Mayer, with an "X", in 1738. This contract bound Mayer to Abraham Hestant of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who had paid for Mayer to travel from Europe.

An indentured servant or indentured laborer is an employee (indenturee) within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a signed or forced contract (indenture) to work without pay for the owner of the indenture for a period of time. The contract often lets the employer sell the labor of an indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit (such as transportation to a new place), or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage. On completion of the contract, indentured servants were given their freedom, and occasionally plots of land. Indentured servitude was often brutal, with a high percentage[vague] of servants dying prior to the expiration of their indentures. In many countries, systems of indentured labor have now been outlawed, and are banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a form of slavery.

The Americas

North America

Until the late 18th century, indentured servitude was very common in British North America. It was often a way for poor Europeans to immigrate to the American colonies: they signed an indenture in return for a costly passage. After their indenture expired, the immigrants were free to work for themselves or another employer. It has been theorized by at least one economist that indentured servitude occurred largely as "an institutional response to a capital market imperfection".[1]

In some cases, the indenture was made with a ship's master, who sold the indenture to an employer in the colonies. Most indentured servants worked as farm laborers or domestic servants, although some were apprenticed to craftsmen.

The terms of an indenture were not always enforced by American courts, although runaways were usually sought out and returned to their employer.

Between one-half and two-thirds of European immigrants to the American colonies between the 1630s and American Revolution came under indentures.[2] However, while almost half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies were indentured servants, at any one time they were outnumbered by workers who had never been indentured, or whose indenture had expired, and thus free wage labor was the more prevalent for Europeans in the colonies.[3] Indentured people were numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them. The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was about 500,000; of these 55,000 were involuntary prisoners. Of the 450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that 48% were indentured.[4] About 75% of these were under the age of 25. The age of adulthood for men was 24 years (not 21); those over 24 generally came on contracts lasting about 3 years.[5] Regarding the children who came, Gary Nash reports that "many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labor once in America."[6]

Several instances of kidnapping[7] for transportation to the Americas are recorded, such as that of Peter Williamson (1730–1799). As historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out, "Although efforts were made to regulate or check their activities, and they diminished in importance in the eighteenth century, it remains true that a certain small part of the European colonial population of America was brought by force, and a much larger portion came in response to deceit and misrepresentation on the part of the spirits [recruiting agents]."[8] One "spirit" named William Thiene was known to have spirited away[9] 840 people from Britain to the colonies in a single year.[10] Historian Lerone Bennett, Jr. notes that "Masters given to flogging often did not care whether their victims were black or white."[11]

Indentured servitude was also used by various English and British governments as a punishment for defeated foes in rebellions and civil wars. Oliver Cromwell sent into enforced indentured service thousands of prisoners captured in the 1648 Battle of Preston and the 1651 Battle of Worcester. King James II acted similarly after the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, and use of such measures continued also in the 18th Century.

Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were sometimes 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 2 years.[12] Cases of successful prosecution for these crimes were very uncommon, as indentured servants were unlikely to have access to a magistrate, and social pressure to avoid such brutality could vary by geography and cultural norm. The situation was particularly difficult for indentured women, because in both low social class and gender, they were believed to be particularly prone to vice, making legal redress unusual.

The American Revolution severely limited immigration to the United States, but economic historians dispute its long-term impact. Sharon Salinger argues that the economic crisis that followed the war made long-term labor contracts unattractive. His analysis of Philadelphia's population shows how the percentage of bound citizens fell from 17% to 6.4% over the course of the war.[13] William Miller posits a more moderate theory, stating that "the Revolution...wrought disturbances upon white servitude. But these were temporary rather than lasting".[14] David Galenson supports this theory by proposing that the numbers of British indentured servants never recovered, and that Europeans from other nationalities replaced them.[15]

The American and British governments passed several laws that helped foster the decline of indentures. The UK Parliament's Passenger Vessels Act 1803 regulated travel conditions aboard ships to make transportation more expensive, so as to hinder landlords' tenants seeking a better life. An American law passed in 1833 abolished imprisonment of debtors, which made prosecuting runaway servants more difficult, increasing the risk of indenture contract purchases. The 13th Amendment, passed in the wake of the American Civil War, made indentured servitude illegal in the United States.


Through its introduction, the details regarding indentured labor varied across import and export regions and most overseas contracts were made before the voyage with the understanding that prospective migrants were competent enough to make overseas contracts on their own account and that they preferred to have a contract before the voyage.[16]

Most labor contracts made were in increments of five years, with the opportunity to extend another five years. Many contracts also provided free passage home after the dictated labor was completed. However, there were generally no policies regulating employers once the labor hours were completed, which led to frequent ill-treatment.[16]


Indian woman in traditional dress
Indian woman in traditional dress

In 1643, the European population of Barbados was 37,200[17] (86% of the population).[18] During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, at least 10,000 Scottish and Irish prisoners of war were transported as indentured laborers to the colonies.[19]

There were also reports of kidnappings of Europeans to work as servants. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, children from England and France were kidnapped and sold into indentured labor in the Caribbean.

A half million Europeans went as indentured servants to the Caribbean (primarily the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean) before 1840.[20][21]

In 1838, with the abolition of slavery at its onset, the British were in the process of transporting a million Indians out of India and into the Caribbean to take the place of the African slaves (freed in 1833) in indentureship. Women, looking for what they believed would be a better life in the colonies, were specifically sought after and recruited at a much higher rate than men due to the high population of men already in the colonies. However, women had to prove their status as single and eligible to emigrate, as married women could not leave without their husbands. Many women seeking escape from abusive relationships were willing to take that chance. The Indian Immigration Act of 1883[22] prevented women from exiting India as widowed or single in order to escape.[23] Arrival in the colonies brought unexpected conditions of poverty, homelessness, and little to no food as the high numbers of emigrants overwhelmed the small villages and flooded the labor market. Many were forced into signing labor contracts that exposed them to the hard field labor on the plantation. Additionally, on arrival to the plantation, single women were 'assigned' a man as they were not allowed to live alone. The subtle difference between slavery and indenture-ship is best seen here as women were still subjected to the control of the plantation owners as well as their newly assigned 'partner'.[24]

Colonial Indian indenture system

The Indian indenture system was a system of indenture, a form of debt bondage, by which 2 million[25] Indians were transported to various colonies of European powers to provide labour for the (mainly sugar) plantations. It started from the end of slavery in 1833 and continued until 1920. This resulted in the development of a large Indian diaspora, which spread from the Indian Ocean (i.e. Réunion and Mauritius) to Pacific Ocean (i.e. Fiji), as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean and Indo-African population.

The British wanted Indians to work in Natal as workers. But the Indians refused, and as a result, the British introduced the indenture system. On 18 January 1826, the Government of the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion laid down terms for the introduction of Indian labourers to the colony. Each man was required to appear before a magistrate and declare that he was going voluntarily. The contract was for five years with pay of ₹8 (12¢ US)[citation needed] per month and rations provided labourers had been transported from Pondicherry and Karaikal. The first attempt at importing Indian labour into Mauritius, in 1829, ended in failure, but by 1834, with abolition throughout most of the British Empire, transportation of Indian labour to the island gained pace. By 1838, 25,000 Indian labourers had been shipped to Mauritius.

After the end of slavery, the West Indian sugar colonies tried the use of emancipated slaves, families from Ireland, Germany and Malta and Portuguese from Madeira. All these efforts failed to satisfy the labour needs of the colonies due to high mortality of the new arrivals and their reluctance to continue working at the end of their indenture. On 16 November 1844, the British Indian Government legalised emigration to Jamaica, Trinidad and Demerara (Guyana). The first ship, the Whitby, sailed from Port Calcutta for British Guiana on 13 January 1838, and arrived in Berbice on 5 May 1838. Transportation to the Caribbean stopped in 1848 due to problems in the sugar industry and resumed in Demerara and Trinidad in 1851 and Jamaica in 1860.

The Indian indenture system was finally banned in 1917.[26] According to The Economist, "When the Indian Legislative Council finally ended did so because of pressure from Indian nationalists and declining profitability, rather than from humanitarian concerns."[26]


Convicts transported to the Australian colonies before the 1840s often found themselves hired out in a form of indentured labor.[27] Indentured servants also emigrated to New South Wales.[28] The Van Diemen's Land Company used skilled indentured labor for periods of seven years or less.[29] A similar scheme for the Swan River area of Western Australia existed between 1829 and 1832.[30]




Australia deported many of these Islanders back to their places of origin in the period 1906–1908 under the provisions of the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901.[31]




The majority of the population of Mauritius are descendants of Indian indentured labourers brought in between 1834 and 1921. Initially brought to work the sugar estates following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire an estimated half a million indentured laborers were present on the island during this period. Aapravasi Ghat, in the bay at Port Louis and now a UNESCO site, was the first British colony to serve as a major reception centre for slaves and indentured servants for British plantation labour.[33]

Legal status

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948) declares in Article 4 "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms".[34] More specifically, it is dealt with by article 1(a) of the United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery.

However, only national legislation can establish the unlawfulness of indentured labor in a specific jurisdiction. In the United States, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000 extended servitude to cover peonage as well as Involuntary Servitude.[35]

See also


  1. ^ Whaples, Robert (March 1995). "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions". The Journal of Economic History. 55 (1): 139–154. CiteSeerX doi:10.1017/S0022050700040602. JSTOR 2123771. ...[the] vast majority [of economic historians and economists] accept the view that indentured servitude was an economic arrangement designed to iron out imperfections in the capital market.
  2. ^ Galenson 1984: 1
  7. ^ "trepan | trapan, n.2". OED Online. June 2017. Oxford University Press
  8. ^ Richard Hofstadter (1971). America at 1750: A Social Portrait. Knopf Doubleday. p. 36. ISBN 9780307809650.
  9. ^ Lerone Bennett, Jr. (November 1969). White Servitude in America. Ebony Magazine. pp. 31–40.
  10. ^ Calendar of State Papers: Colonial series. Great Britain. Public Record Office. 1893. p. 521.
  11. ^ Calendar of State Papers: Colonial series. Great Britain. Public Record Office. 1893. p. 36.
  12. ^ Race, gender, and power in America : the legacy of the Hill-Thomas hearings. Hill, Anita., Jordan, Emma Coleman. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995. ISBN 0-19-508774-7. OCLC 32891709.CS1 maint: others (link)
  13. ^ Salinger, Sharon V. (1981). "Colonial Labor in Transition: The Decline of Indentured Servitude in Late Eighteenth‐Century Philadelphia". Labor History. 2. 22 (2): 165–191 [181]. doi:10.1080/00236568108584612.
  14. ^ Miller, William (1940). "The Effects of the American Revolution on Indentured Servitude". Pennsylvania History. 3. 7: 131–141 [137].
  15. ^ Galenson, David (1984). "The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis". Journal of Economic History. 1. 44: 1–26 [13]. doi:10.1017/s002205070003134x.
  16. ^ a b Walton, Lai. Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar. pp. 50–70.
  17. ^ Cutler, Cecilia (12 July 2017). Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas: In honor of John V. Singler. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 178. ISBN 978-9027252777.
  18. ^ Population, Slavery and Economy in Barbados, BBC.
  19. ^ Higman 1997, p. 108.
  22. ^ [1]
  23. ^ Bahadur, Gaiutra (2014). Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. United States: Chicago Press. p. 22. ISBN 9780226211381.
  24. ^ Bahadur, Gaiutra (2014). Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. United States: University of Chicago Press. p. 123. ISBN 9780226211381.
  25. ^ Indentured labour from South Asia (1834-1917) - 2013, Dr Sundari Anitha from the University of Lincoln and Professor Ruth Pearson from the University of Leeds, 'Striking Women: South Asian workers'
  26. ^ a b "The legacy of Indian migration to European colonies". The Economist. 2 September 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
  28. ^ Perkins, John (1987), "Convict Labour and the Australian Agricultural Company", in Nicholas, Stephen (ed.), The Convict Workers: Reinterpeting Australia's Past, Studies in Australian History, Cambridge University Press (published 1988), p. 168, ISBN 9780521361262, retrieved 2012-11-14, A feature of the Australian Agricultural Company's operation at Port Stephens was the simultaneous employment [...] of various forms of labour. The original nucleus of the workforce consisted of indentured servants brought out from Europe on seven-year contracts.
  30. ^ Fitch, Valerie Eager for Labour:The Swan River Indenture Hesperian Press 2003
  31. ^ "Documenting Democracy". Archived from the original on October 26, 2009. Retrieved 2009-07-04.
  32. ^ Patel, Hasu H. (1972). "General Amin and the Indian Exodus from Uganda". Issue: A Journal of Opinion. 2 (4): 12–22. doi:10.2307/1166488. JSTOR 1166488.
  33. ^ "History". Government Portal of Mauritius. Retrieved 22 January 2015.


Further reading

  • Nagl, Dominik. No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions - Law, State Formation and Governance in England, Massachusetts und South Carolina, 1630-1769 (LIT, 2013): 515–535, 577f., 635–
  • Torabully, Khal, Voices from the Aapravasi Ghat - Indentured imaginaries, poetry collection on the coolie route and the fakir's aesthetics, Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund, AGTF, Mauritius, November 2, 2013.
  • Wareing, John. Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London to America, 1618-1718. Oxford Oxford University Press, February 2017



External links

This page was last edited on 17 September 2020, at 22:47