How long was indentured servitude

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. For those that survived the work and received their freedom package, many historians argue that they were better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country.

Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year's worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. 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. In , the U. On the Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru, trafficked Chinese workers mined guano, a fertilizer used on American farms and plantations. They labored up to 20 hours per day in a toxic environment, while bosses applied whippings and attacks by dogs as punishment for insubordination.

Suicide at the camps was common. The act was one of many reforms intended to fundamentally restructure American society around a liberal notion of free labor. Meanwhile, the trafficking of contract laborers worldwide continued well into the 20th century. The unfree conditions it produced has no shortage of modern analogues —as historians have often noted. Common to all of these stories is the subordination of a minority group—usually made up of foreigners and other marginalized people—for the economic and social benefit of the majority, using the tools of political disenfranchisement and the impairment of legal rights.

This is what makes the immigration proposal put forward by Posner and Weyl last month so alarming. Bit by bit, the United States would transform as legislators, judges, and administrators adjudicated countless matters pitting the interests of sponsoring citizens who could vote against the interests of immigrants who could not. The deepening divide would corrode democracy twice over: first, by excluding immigrants from having a political voice and rights, and second, by encouraging a social hierarchy that would inevitably intensify class distinctions among citizens, too.

Personal familiarity poses no barrier to this process. Abuse without redress was pervasive, despite bonds of affection.

The servants of this era often were uneducated and could be cheated by unscrupulous masters who might forge new contracts with terms more favorable to themselves. So, this way of marking the two original copies helped to ensure a lasting means of authenticating the contract. In finance, indenture appears when discussing bond agreements, certain real estate deeds , and some aspects of bankruptcies.

Between bond issuers and bondholders, an indenture is a legal and binding contract that spells out the important features of a bond, such as its maturity date, the timing of interest payments, method of calculating interest, and any callable or convertible features, among others. Immigrants entered indentured servitude contracts of their own free will, as opposed to slaves, who did not have a choice in the matter.

Treatment of indentured servants differed greatly from one master to another. Some masters considered their indentured servants as personal property and made these individuals work difficult jobs before their contracts expired.

Other masters treated their slaves more humanely than their servants because slaves were regarded as a lifetime investment, whereas servants would be gone in a few years. Indentured servants did have some rights, though, at least in theory. For example, they had access to the courts and were entitled to own land.

However, masters retained their right to prohibit their servants from marrying and had the authority to sell them to another master at any time. A specific similarity between slavery and indentured servitude is that indentured servants could be sold, loaned, or inherited, at least during the duration of their contract terms. As a result, some indentured servants performed little work for the landowners who paid for their passage across the Atlantic.

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