American History 1584-1783 - Essay Example

work] American History 1584-1783: Indentured Servitude and Slavery Impact of the need for reliable labor on life in the southern colonies. Regardless of their country of origin, many immigrants were indentured servants, or people who sold their labor in exchange for passage to the New World and housing on their arrival. In 1619, a Dutch boat from the Spanish Caribbean was said to arrive in Jamestown, carrying the soon to be first black slaves America would know. The twenty Africans were first considered indentured servants, as were the many that soon followed.

Most of the first slaves to the colony continued to come from the Dutch or Spanish Caribbean as indentured servants until entrepreneurs realized just how profitable the African slave trade could be. The introduction of tobacco, Virginias staple crop, created a demand for labor, superseding the supply of indentured servants coming to the colony. However, due to the increase in labor, an increase in skilled labor also resulted - to build houses, to make the hogsheads, to pack and ship the sugar, tobacco, or rice.

As the demand for labor grew large, the rising cost of white labor tended to make slaves a less expensive source of unskilled labor than additional servants. Eventually, the majority of the bound labor force then changed from white to black. During this period, the servant became an inevitable, and necessary, source of skilled labor.Slave trade in Jamestown slowly developed as degrees of prejudice towards dark skin formed. The African slaves were continuously held to servitude as colonists considered them typically cheaper to feed and clothe and better "seasoned" for work in Virginias hot climate.

As indentured European servants proved unruly and rebellious, and immigration sporadic, the planters turned to African slaves as better sources for labor.Similarities and differences between indentured servitude and slavery. The similarities between slaves and indentured servants were that both could be bought and sold. They lacked proper food and clothing, had poor housing, and had hard work. They often died from servitude, could be hunted and punished for running away, and whipped or branded.

Whippings, hard labor, and lack of food and clothing were all reasons for running away. Both were abused. Both the servant and the slave were valuable economic assets to the owners. For most of the seventeenth century the lives of white indentured servants and enslaved blacks were similar. They worked together in the fields; they ate together and slept in the same part of a building. The changes in day-to-day conditions really came after Nathaniel Bacons rebellion in 1676.Indentured servitude differed from slavery in one very substantial way.

Bondage in perpetuity carried with it (after 1662 in Virginia) the condition of inheritance for every child born of a slave mother. Indenture was contractual and consensual; slavery was forced and involuntary, usually the result of capture and sale. Finally, the right of self-possession and full control over the labor of ones hands was not with slavery. Indentured servitude and slavery are two different forms of involuntary or forced labor. The indentured servants entered into the condition voluntarily, unlike African slaves who were taken by force.

Indentured servants were not legally prohibited from learning to read and write, unlike African slaves. Indentured servants were not policed by the shared resources of entire communities, unlike African slaves. Finally, indentured servants were not seen by the rest of society as a group separated by race, castigated as inferior or subhuman, and then subjected to 100 years of formal and substantive racial apartheid after nominal emancipation.