During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a variety of labor market institutions developed to facilitate the movement of labor in response to the opportunities created by American factor proportions. While some immigrants migrated on their own, the majority of immigrants were either indentured servants or African slaves. Show Because of the cost of passage—which exceeded half a year’s income for a typical British immigrant and a full year’s income for a typical German immigrant—only a small portion of European migrants could afford to pay for their passage to the Americas (Grubb 1985a). They did so by signing contracts, or “indentures,” committing themselves to work for a fixed number of years in the future—their labor being their only viable asset—with British merchants, who then sold these contracts to colonists after their ship reached America. Indentured servitude was introduced by the Virginia Company in 1619 and appears to have arisen from a combination of the terms of two other types of labor contract widely used in England at the time: service in husbandry and apprenticeship (Galenson 1981). In other cases, migrants borrowed money for their passage and committed to repay merchants by pledging to sell themselves as servants in America, a practice known as “redemptioner servitude (Grubb 1986). Redemptioners bore increased risk because they could not predict in advance what terms they might be able to negotiate for their labor, but presumably they did so because of other benefits, such as the opportunity to choose their own master, and to select where they would be employed. Although data on immigration for the colonial period are scattered and incomplete a number of scholars have estimated that between half and three quarters of European immigrants arriving in the colonies came as indentured or redemptioner servants. Using data for the end of the colonial period Grubb (1985b) found that close to three-quarters of English immigrants to Pennsylvania and nearly 60 percent of German immigrants arrived as servants. A number of scholars have examined the terms of indenture and redemptioner contracts in some detail (see, e.g., Galenson 1981; Grubb 1985a). They find that consistent with the existence of a well-functioning market, the terms of service varied in response to differences in individual productivity, employment conditions, and the balance of supply and demand in different locations. The other major source of labor for the colonies was the forced migration of African slaves. Slavery had been introduced in the West Indies at an early date, but it was not until the late seventeenth century that significant numbers of slaves began to be imported into the mainland colonies. From 1700 to 1780 the proportion of blacks in the Chesapeake region grew from 13 percent to around 40 percent. In South Carolina and Georgia, the black share of the population climbed from 18 percent to 41 percent in the same period (McCusker and Menard, 1985, p. 222). Galenson (1984) explains the transition from indentured European to enslaved African labor as the result of shifts in supply and demand conditions in England and the trans-Atlantic slave market. Conditions in Europe improved after 1650, reducing the supply of indentured servants, while at the same time increased competition in the slave trade was lowering the price of slaves (Dunn 1984). In some sense the colonies’ early experience with indentured servants paved the way for the transition to slavery. Like slaves, indentured servants were unfree, and ownership of their labor could be freely transferred from one owner to another. Unlike slaves, however, they could look forward to eventually becoming free (Morgan 1971). Over time a marked regional division in labor market institutions emerged in colonial America. The use of slaves was concentrated in the Chesapeake and Lower South, where the presence of staple export crops (rice, indigo and tobacco) provided economic rewards for expanding the scale of cultivation beyond the size achievable with family labor. European immigrants (primarily indentured servants) tended to concentrate in the Chesapeake and Middle Colonies, where servants could expect to find the greatest opportunities to enter agriculture once they had completed their term of service. While New England was able to support self-sufficient farmers, its climate and soil were not conducive to the expansion of commercial agriculture, with the result that it attracted relatively few slaves, indentured servants, or free immigrants. These patterns are illustrated in Table 1, which summarizes the composition and destinations of English emigrants in the years 1773 to 1776. Table 1 English Emigration to the American Colonies, by Destination and Type, 1773-76
Source: Grubb (1985b, p. 334). ReferencesDunn, Richard S. “Servants and Slaves: The Recruitment and Employment of Labor.” In Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era, edited by Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Galenson, David W. White Servitude in Colonial America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Galenson, David W. “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis.” Journal of Economic History 44, no. 1 (1984): 1-26. Grubb, Farley. “The Market for Indentured Immigrants: Evidence on the Efficiency of Forward Labor Contracting in Philadelphia, 1745-1773.” Journal of Economic History 45, no. 4 (1985a): 855-68. Grubb, Farley. “The Incidence of Servitude in Trans-Atlantic Migration, 1771-1804.” Explorations in Economic History 22 (1985b): 316-39. Grubb, Farley. “Redemptioner Immigration to Pennsylvania: Evidence on Contract Choice and Profitability.” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 2 (1986): 407-18. McCusker, John J. and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British America: 1607-1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Morgan, Edmund S. “The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18.” American Historical Review 76 (1971): 595-611. Citation: Rosenbloom, Joshua. “Indentured Servitude in the Colonial U.S.”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. March 16, 2008. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/indentured-servitude-in-the-colonial-u-s/
This exhibit offers a glimpse of the story of migration to Colonial British North America. While the data from the Record of Indentures only covers a three-year period, it has the potential to tell thousands of stories, and reveal new knowledge about migration, labor, and exploitation. Many of the individuals recorded in the Record of Indentures have been lost to history. We hope this resource will open the path for their stories to be told. Because visitors to the exhibit may not be familiar with the concept or details of indentured servitude in this time and place, we’ve provided a brief overview of frequently asked questions along with other suggested resources. Find out more below: What is indentured servitude?Indentured servitude was prevalent in North America from the early seventeenth century but dwindled during the first decades after the Revolution. It represented one of several forms of unfree labor that colonists relied upon to support the agricultural and artisanal industries of the colonies. An indenture was a contract that bound an individual to a master for a fixed period of time. The indentured person - woman, man, or child - would work for a specified number of years and in exchange, the master would provide them food, shelter, and occasionally some money or property as “freedom dues.”1 At the end of the contract, the individual would be released from their indenture and become a free person.2 Types of contracts found within the Record of Indentures
Explore the gallery to learn more about newspapers and the indenture market. Why did people enter into contracts of indenture?During the eighteenth century, approximately half of all migrants from Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe made their way to North America by way of indentured servitude. Most of these individuals traveled to America in pursuit of a better life, often out of desperate circumstances including poverty, starvation, war, and political persecution.6 Some individuals were forced into indentured servitude as a way to avoid imprisonment, as punishment for criminal acts, or, as was the case in Philadelphia, bound in childhood as apprentices by the House of Employment with or without parental approval.7 What was life like for an indentured servant or redemptioner?
Those who were able to complete their period of indenture would be freed from the contract. They were typically given “two suits of apparel one whereof to be new” or “freedom dues” which might be goods, land, or money.10 While servitude did provide some with an opportunity to create a new and prosperous life, many servants did not find success in America. Only an estimated one out of seven indentured servants became landowners in the Delaware River Valley and many newly arrived indentured servants died from exposure to the new environment before their contract had expired.11 What was life like for an apprentice?For apprentices, the typical story is much different. An apprentice contract was usually shorter, generally undertaken by younger individuals, involved learning a skill. It was customary for the apprentice to be supplied with the tools of the trade upon completion of their contract. Parents often consented to apprenticeships, believing that it created better opportunities for a successful life. In fact, one of the most famous Americans of the pre-Revolutionary era, Benjamin Franklin, got his start working as an apprentice to his older brother, a printer. What about slavery?Indentured servants were one component of a spectrum of unfree labor in the British North America colonies. Enslaved women and men were another. This is a vitally important story distinct and separate from that of indentured servitude and apprenticeship. While indentured servitude certainly had a major impact on the colonial population of North America, it is worth noting that Africans, whose migration was not voluntary but forced, constituted the largest number of migrants to North America during the eighteenth century. In fact, at the time of the 1771-1773 dataset, enslaved humans accounted for one of every five residents of the colonies. One highly recommended resource you may visit to learn more about racial slavery and the Transatlantic slave trade is Slave Voyages, a digital memorial and database found at https://slavevoyages.org/. Indenture and apprenticeship were difficult ordeals. But it is important to state here, unequivocally, these miseries were not comparable in severity, degradation, or degree of inhumanity to those experienced by Africans taken by brute force to work indefinitely and against their will on another continent. Some evidence of these stark differences is visible in the Record of Indentures itself. These records define fixed terms of work and promised provisions, alongside humanizing details such as name, age, and origin, in the form of a contract that afforded some degree of legal recourse if breached by either party. By contrast, the existence of records of this kind are few to none for enslaved peoples, who were treated as nothing more than cargo aboard a vessel and recorded in the aggregate. Another element that can be traced in the Record of Indentures is racial: Servants as well as most landholders and citizens in British North America were overwhelmingly white-skinned north Europeans, while nearly all enslaved people were originally transported from Africa.12 This visible, hereditary distinction functioned as a source of isolation and prejudice, the effects of which can be glimpsed in the contracts of multiracial people in the Record of Indentures. It is not within the scope of this exhibit to provide a comprehensive comparison of these concurrent practices. However, we welcome you to explore our bibliography to learn more. Next Topic The Journey to Indenture |
What is the difference between indentured servants and Redemptioners?
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