Indentured servitude facts for kids

This is an indenture contract signed by Henry Mayer in 1738. It shows how Mayer agreed to work for Abraham Hestant in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Hestant paid for Mayer's trip from Europe.

Indentured servitude was a type of work contract where a person agreed to work without regular pay for a set number of years. This agreement was called an "indenture". People might choose this to pay off a debt or to get something in return later, like a trip to a new country. Sometimes, it was also given as a punishment by a court.

In the past, this system was used for apprenticeships. An apprentice would work for free for a skilled tradesman to learn a job. This was a bit like a modern internship, but it lasted for a fixed time, usually seven years or less. Later, it became a way for people to pay for their travel to new places, especially to the Americas.

Just like a loan, an indenture contract could be sold. Employers often bought these contracts from people who helped bring workers over. The price of these contracts could change, depending on how many workers were available. Once the worker had finished their contract, they were free. Sometimes, they even received a piece of land.

Usually, indentured workers could get married, move around their local area as long as their work was done, read what they wanted, and take classes.

Indentured Servitude in the Americas

North America

For a long time, until the late 1700s, indentured servitude was very common in British America. It was a popular way for people from Europe to move to the American colonies. They would sign a contract to work in exchange for their expensive journey. However, this system was also used to unfairly treat people from Asia, especially from India and China, who wanted to move to the New World. These Asian workers often helped build roads and railway systems.

After their contract ended, these immigrants were free to work for themselves or for someone else. Sometimes, a ship's captain would make the contract with a worker and then sell it to an employer in the colonies. Most indentured servants worked on farms or as house helpers, but some learned a trade from skilled workers.

American courts did not always make sure the terms of the contracts were followed. However, workers who ran away were usually found and sent back to their employers.

Between the 1630s and the American Revolution, about half to two-thirds of all European immigrants to the American Colonies came as indentured servants.

The British government also used indentured service as a punishment for prisoners of war after rebellions. For example, Oliver Cromwell sent thousands of prisoners into indentured service after battles in the 1600s. King James II did the same after a rebellion in 1685. This practice continued into the 1700s.

Indentured servants needed their master's permission to marry. They were often treated harshly and did not have many legal rights in court.

Indentured servitude started to decline after Bacon's Rebellion. This was a revolt by servants against the government of Colonial Virginia. Many things caused this rebellion, including how servants were treated, the government's support for native tribes, and the unfairness between rich and poor people in the colonies. Before this rebellion, indentured servitude was the main way to get workers for early American colonists.

While things didn't change right away after Bacon's Rebellion, it made people distrust servant labor and fear future revolts. This fear eventually led to a greater reliance on enslaved Africans. This also helped create the idea of racial separation and brought white Americans together based on race, rather than their wealth or social class. This helped prevent future rebellions and changed how farming was done.

The American and British governments passed laws that helped end indentured servitude. The UK Parliament's Passenger Vessels Act 1803 made travel conditions on ships stricter and more expensive. This made it harder for landlords' tenants to seek a better life by becoming indentured servants. An American law passed in 1833 stopped people from being jailed for debt. This made it harder to punish runaway servants, which made buying indenture contracts riskier. Finally, the 13th Amendment, passed after the American Civil War, made indentured servitude illegal in the United States.

Contracts

The details of indentured labor contracts changed depending on where people were coming from and going to. Most contracts for overseas travel were made before the journey. People were expected to be able to understand and agree to these contracts on their own. Many preferred to have a contract before they sailed.

Most labor contracts lasted for five years, with a chance to extend for another five years. Many contracts also promised a free trip home after the work was done. However, there were usually no rules about how employers should treat workers once their work hours were finished. This often led to workers being treated badly.

Caribbean

An Indian woman in traditional dress.

In 1643, the European population in Barbados was 37,200, which was 86% of everyone living there. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, at least 10,000 Scottish and Irish prisoners of war were sent as indentured laborers to the colonies.

Before 1840, about half a million Europeans went as indentured servants to the Caribbean, mostly to the English-speaking islands.

In 1838, when slavery was ending, the British began moving a million people from India to the Caribbean. These Indian workers were meant to replace the recently freed Africans (who were freed in 1833) as indentured laborers. Women were especially wanted and recruited more often than men because there were already many men in the colonies. However, women had to prove they were single and allowed to leave, as married women could not go without their husbands.

When they arrived in the colonies, workers faced unexpected problems like poverty, homelessness, and not enough food. The large number of immigrants overwhelmed the small villages and made it hard to find work. Many were forced to sign labor contracts that made them do hard field work on plantations.

It's important to know that while Irish and other European people were indentured servants in Barbados in the 1600s, this was very different from slavery. An enslaved African person's body was owned, and so were their children. But for indentured servants, only their work was owned through a contract. Laws and social rules made sure that "indentured" people and "slaves" were treated differently and seen as different groups.

Barbados is a good example of a colony where the difference between enslaved Africans and "servants" was made clear in the law. Special laws were created in 1661 that treated each group separately. Enslaved Africans, and for a while, free Africans, were not allowed to use the court system at all, even as witnesses. But Barbados allowed "white servants" to go to court if they felt they were treated unfairly. Also, children of African descent had no extra protection, while children of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh families who were sent to Barbados as indentured servants could not work without a parent's permission.

These differences in social classes helped prevent enslaved people and servants from joining together in revolts against plantation owners.

Colonial Indian Indenture System

The Indian indenture system was a way of bringing about two million Indians, sometimes called coolies, to different colonies ruled by European powers. They were brought to work on plantations, mostly sugar farms. This system started after slavery ended in 1833 and continued until 1920. It led to many people of Indian descent living in places all over the world, from the Indian Ocean (like Réunion and Mauritius) to the Pacific Ocean (like Fiji). It also led to the growth of Indo-Caribbean and Indo-African populations.

The Indian indenture system was finally made illegal in 1917.

Indentured Labor in Oceania

Convicts who were sent to the Australian colonies before the 1840s often ended up working in a form of indentured labor. Indentured servants also moved to New South Wales. The Van Diemen's Land Company used skilled indentured labor for periods of seven years or less. A similar plan was used for the Swan River area of Western Australia between 1829 and 1832.

During the 1860s, farmers in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoa Islands needed workers. They encouraged a trade in long-term indentured labor called "blackbirding." At its peak, more than half of the adult men from some of these islands worked abroad.

For 40 years, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, workers for the sugar-cane fields of Queensland, Australia, included about 62,000 South Sea Islanders who were often forced into indentured service. These workers mainly came from Melanesia, especially from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. A smaller number came from Polynesian and Micronesian areas like Samoa, the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati), and the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu). They were all known as "Kanakas."

Australia sent many of these Islanders back to their home countries between 1906 and 1908, under a law called the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901.

The Australian-controlled areas of Papua and New Guinea (which joined after the Second World War to form Papua New Guinea) were the last places in the world to use indentured servitude.

Indentured Labor in Africa

Many building projects in British East Africa and South Africa needed a lot of workers. There weren't enough local people willing or available to do the work. So, indentured Indians from India were brought in for projects like the Uganda Railway, as farm workers, and as miners. These workers and their families became a big part of the population and economy in Kenya and Uganda. However, this also caused some hard feelings from other groups. Idi Amin's expulsion of the "Asians" from Uganda in 1972 was when Indo-Africans were forced to leave.

Most of the people in Mauritius are descendants of Indian indentured laborers who arrived between 1834 and 1921. They were first brought to work on sugar plantations after slavery was abolished in the British Empire. About half a million indentured laborers were on the island during this time. Aapravasi Ghat, a place in the bay at Port Louis and now a UNESCO site, was the first major place in a British colony to receive indentured Indians who came to work on plantations after slavery ended.

Legal Status Today

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, states in Article 4: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms." This means that indentured servitude, as it was known, is now illegal. It is also specifically addressed by Article 1(a) of the United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery.

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See also

In Spanish: Trabajador no abonado para niños