Indentured Servitude

Indentured Servitude PDF Author: Anna Suranyi
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228007798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Hundreds of thousands of British and Irish men, women, and children crossed the Atlantic during the seventeenth century as indentured servants. Many had agreed to serve for four years, but large numbers had been trafficked or “spirited away” or were sent forcibly by government agencies as criminals, political rebels, or destitute vagrants. In Indentured Servitude Anna Suranyi provides new insight into the lives of these people. The British government, Suranyi argues, profited by supplying labour for the colonies, removing unwanted populations, and reducing incarceration costs within Britain. In addition, it was believed that indigents, especially destitute children, benefited morally from being placed in indenture. Capitalist entrepreneurs who were influential at the highest levels of government made their fortunes from Atlantic trade in goods, indentured servants, and slaves, and their participation in the servant trade contributed to the commercialization of criminal justice. Suranyi breaks new ground in showing how indentured servitude was challenged: once in the colonies, indentured servants adapted resourcefully to their circumstances and rebelled against unfair conditions and abuse by suing their masters, by running away, or through outright revolt. Emerging ideas about race and citizenship led to vehement public debate about the conditions of indentured servants and the ethics of indenture itself, prompting legislation that aimed to curb the worst excesses while slavery continued to expand unchecked.

Indentured Servitude

Indentured Servitude PDF Author: Anna Suranyi
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228007798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hundreds of thousands of British and Irish men, women, and children crossed the Atlantic during the seventeenth century as indentured servants. Many had agreed to serve for four years, but large numbers had been trafficked or “spirited away” or were sent forcibly by government agencies as criminals, political rebels, or destitute vagrants. In Indentured Servitude Anna Suranyi provides new insight into the lives of these people. The British government, Suranyi argues, profited by supplying labour for the colonies, removing unwanted populations, and reducing incarceration costs within Britain. In addition, it was believed that indigents, especially destitute children, benefited morally from being placed in indenture. Capitalist entrepreneurs who were influential at the highest levels of government made their fortunes from Atlantic trade in goods, indentured servants, and slaves, and their participation in the servant trade contributed to the commercialization of criminal justice. Suranyi breaks new ground in showing how indentured servitude was challenged: once in the colonies, indentured servants adapted resourcefully to their circumstances and rebelled against unfair conditions and abuse by suing their masters, by running away, or through outright revolt. Emerging ideas about race and citizenship led to vehement public debate about the conditions of indentured servants and the ethics of indenture itself, prompting legislation that aimed to curb the worst excesses while slavery continued to expand unchecked.

Bound Over

Bound Over PDF Author: John Van der Zee
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9780671541187
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
From 1609 until well after the founding of the Republic, half of all the colonists who came to America did so under some form of involuntary labor. Author John van der Zee draws on original memoirs, newspapers, and pamphlets to re-create the life stories of a number of the remarkable men and women whose enshacklement and destitution paved the way for American freedom. From the narratives of convicts, redemptioners (who accepted servitude in exchange for transportation to America), and those who were "spirited away" (snatched against their will), van der Zee weaves a colorful "people's history" of colonial and Revolutionary times. In their own words and through their own eyes, we meet such men and women as the first labor organizer in America; the young nobleman whose memoirs inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped; and a real-life Moll Flanders. The book also offers a surprising new interpretation of the Revolution as growing out of this widespread practice of servitude.--From publisher description.

Colonists for Sale

Colonists for Sale PDF Author: Clifford Lindsey Alderman
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780027002201
Category : Indentured servants
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Examines the origin, working conditions, and eventual fate of indentured servants in America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Infortunate

Infortunate PDF Author: Susan E. Klepp
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271041131
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description


White Cargo

White Cargo PDF Author: Don Jordan
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814742963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
White Cargo is the forgotten story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain's American colonies. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London's streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide "breeders" for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock. Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history. This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.

Colonists in Bondage

Colonists in Bondage PDF Author: Abbott Emerson Smith
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807839671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This is the story of the colonists of the kitchens, the stables, the fields, the shops, and those who came to America as indentured servants, men and women who sold" themselves to masters for a period of time in order to pay passage from an old world to a new and freer one. Their leaven has gone into the fiber of American society." Originally published in 1947. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Colonialism and Migration; Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery

Colonialism and Migration; Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery PDF Author: P.C. Emmer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400943547
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description


One Hundred Years of Servitude

One Hundred Years of Servitude PDF Author: Rana Partap Behal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789382381433
Category : British
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
This book presents a hundred-year history of tea plantations in the Assam (Brahmaputra) Valley during British colonial rule in India. It explores a world where more than two million migrant laborers worked under conditions of indentured servitude in the plantations, producing tea for an increasingly profitable global market. Behal traces the genesis and early development of the tea industry; the links between the colonial state and private British capital in fostering plantations in Assam; the nature of the 'tea mania,' and its consequences, which led to the emergence of the indenture labor system in Assam's tea gardens. The book describes process of labor mobilization and the nature of labor relations in the tea plantations. It deals with the operational aspects of labor recruitment, which involved the transportation and employment of migrant laborers, from the 1860s until the the indenture system was formally dismantled. It focuses on the power structure that ruled over the organization of production and labor relations within the plantations. This power structure operated at two levels: around the Indian Tea Association, the apex body of the tea industry, and the tea planters' coercive authority. The book examines the role of the colonial state and provides statistics on production, while also telling the story of everyday labor life in the tea gardens, and of the resistance to the oppressive regime by 'coolie' laborers who had been coerced into generational servitude. It analyses the forms of their protests, and raises the question whether the transformation of these migrant agrarian communities working in conditions of unfree labor was proletarian in nature.

Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America

Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America PDF Author: Kenneth Morgan
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814756706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Kenneth Morgan shows how the institutions of indentured servitude and black slavery interacted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He covers all aspects of the two labor systems, including their impact on the economy, on racial attitudes, social structures and on regional variations within the colonies. Throughout, overriding themes emerge: the labor market in North America for indentured servants, the significance of racial distinctions, supply and demand factors in transatlantic migration and labor, and resistance to bondage.

'To Serve Well and Faithfully'

'To Serve Well and Faithfully' PDF Author: Sharon Vineberg Salinger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521334426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Thousands crossed the Atlantic to labor as bound workers in the Quaker colony. They came with little more than vague promises that servitude would propel them toward a future that would enable them to lead independent lives. What motivated them to take th