Indentured Servitude

What is Indentured Servitude?

Indentured servitude meaning is known to imply a specific contract between two individuals. In the given contract, one individual did not work for money, but in exchange for the price of passage to the United States of America. Indentured servitude was quite a popular concept during the 1600s in the United States of America. It could be essentially viewed as a type of barter system.

For instance, if someone was seeking a new life in America, but was not able to afford the costly fare of a steamship from some other country, he or she would set up a contract with some wealthy landowner in the United States of America for performing a specific type of work for a specified period in exchange for the cost of the boat fare.

Getting an Understanding of Indentured servitude

In the United States of America, the concept of Indentured servitude started during the early 1600s. It began in Virginia. This was just after Jamestown’s settlement. Most of the early American settlers out there required cheap labor for maintaining their farmlands and large-sized estates. As such, several landowners agreed funding the passage of European immigrants to the colonies in America during the 1600s. These immigrants were referred to as indentured servants. The given concept continued till the time of the 1700s.

In addition to the USA, there were other parts of the world that were engaged in Indentured servitude as well. For instance, several individuals had left Europe to enter Caribbean for working as indentured servants on the massive sugar plantations.

Working of the Concept of Indentured servitude

Under the concept of Indentured servitude, the contract made stipulations that the worker would borrow money for the transportation while repaying the lenders upon performing a specific type of labor for a fixed period. Skilled laborers back then were mostly indentured for a period of 4-5 years. However, unskilled laborers were expected to stay in the given contract for around 7 or more years.

Most of the workers who were indentured were males. Most of them were in their early teens or twenties. However, there were several women as well who went into these types of agreements for working off the respective debts in the form of domestic servants or household employees. Indentured Servants & Their Works

Some of the indentured servants were known to serve the role of cooks, field workers, gardeners, general laborers, and housekeepers. There were other who learned specific trades including bricklaying, blacksmithing, plastering, and others. At the same time, there were other indentured servants out there who went on to complete the contract while receiving Land, tools, livestock, and other necessities for setting out on their own. There were servants that did not live to pay off the respective contracts due to work-related accidents or diseases. Some servants even ran away from the given services.