Indentured servitude in Virginia

Indentured servitude in continental North America began in the Colony of Virginia in 1609.^{[Journal of Social History 1]} Initially created as means of funding voyages for European workers to the New World, the institution dwindled over time as the labor force was replaced with enslaved Africans. Servitude became a central institution in the economy and society of many parts of colonial British America. Abbot Emerson Smith, a leading historian of indentured servitude during the colonial period, estimated that between one-half and two-thirds of all white immigrants to the British colonies between the Puritan migration of the 1630s and the Revolution came under indenture.^{[The Journal of Social HIstory 1]} For the colony of Virginia, specifically, more than two-thirds of all white immigrants arrived as indentured servants.

Origins

Indentured servitude first appeared in use in Virginia in 1609. Lands newly acquired from Powhatan Indians by white settlers required large amounts of tedious labor in order to transform into profit-producing tobacco farms.^[1] The most critical economic problem facing early investors in the Virginia Company and the settlers they sent to North America was recruiting and motivating an adequate labor force. Initial efforts to build a labor force yielded disappointing results. Passage fares to Virginia in the early seventeenth century were high relative to the annual wages of English servants in husbandry or hired agricultural laborers. Few prospective migrants were able to pay the cost of their voyage out of their own accumulated savings. To resolve this issue, the Virginia Company decided to use its own funds to advance the cost of passage to prospective settlers. The Company’s advance took the form of a loan to the migrants, who contracted to repay this debt out of their net earnings in America. The Company went on to design three different forms of servitude contracts.

Terms and Conditions of the Three Forms of Servitude Contracts

The First Indentured Servitude Contract, 1609–1619: The first form of indentured servitude contract was designed and implemented in 1609 and was used until 1619. Under this contract, the Virginia Company’s funds were used to pay transportation costs for migrants. In exchange, the migrants were required to work directly for the company once they arrived in Virginia. The contracts also stipulated that in return for their labor in Virginia, the migrants would become investors in the Company enterprise, with claim to a share in the division of the Company’s profits. Migrants would receive their share at the end of their seven-year labor contract. This arrangement was largely unpopular amongst laborers due to the living and working conditions. The men were required to live and work communally under “quasi-military” conditions. The tasks assigned to the laborers were arduous and the food was “scanty.” Some workers chose to run away to live with the Indians. The Company felt that this action threatened the continued survival of their enterprise and reacted forcefully to the crime. Recaptured laborers were subject to capital punishments that included being hung, burned to death, or shot.

The Second Indentured Servitude Contract, 1619–1620: By 1619, however, a new system had been introduced. The Virginia Company still paid for the transportation costs of the laborers, but the laborers were no longer contracted to work exclusively for the company once they arrived. Instead, free planters in the colony would rent the new laborers from the company for a year at a fixed rate, in addition to covering their maintenance costs during that year. The Company believed that this system would yield a number of advantages. The new migrants’ placement with established planters would provide them with a place to live immediately after arrival, so the Company would not be responsible for funding their maintenance once in Virginia ay longer. Additionally, the established planters would train the laborers so that when their year of private service expired, they would have the skills necessary to provide for themselves in these new conditions and socio-political structure. Issues arose however, when the value of labor rose sharply due to the tobacco boom. Private employers began trying to acquire additional labor for their tobacco farms by enticing laborers on other farms with promises of shorter terms of service. The prevalence of this practice became so severe that in 1619 the General Assembly had issue an order that stipulated that indentured servants had to remain in service to the original planter who rented them for their entire contracted term of service. The Company’s new rental policies also introduced an additional principal-agent relationship between the Company and the private planters. The Company became concerned that there were insufficient incentives for the planters to adequately maintain the health and wellbeing of laborers, since they only rented them for one year. High rates of mortality and instances of runaways became the economic burden of the Company, which maintained legal ownership of the servants during their rental tenures.

The Third Indentured Servitude Contract, 1620-early 1700s: The Company created a third form of Indentured servitude in which migrants transported at the Company’s expense from England to Virginia. The contracts of the migrants were then sold outright to planters. These contracts bound the migrants to labor for fixed terms of years. Once the planters purchased these contracts from the importer at the docks, they could either keep the servants as a source of labor for the full contract term or they could sell the contract to another planter. ^[2]

Decline & the Role of African Slavery

As more African slave labor became available in the colony at the turn of the century, planters decreased their employment of white indentured servants for unskilled labor. As demand for skilled indentured servants increased, attitudes about the institution also changed. Skilled indentures were able to sell their craftsmanship once they became freedmen, and therefore earned more income than the unskilled indentures who came before them. These new indentured servants were therefore much less likely to cause revolts and the concerns of the gentry then shifted from white laborers to black laborers exclusively. This marks the early eighteenth century as not only a shift in the composition of the labor force but also as a shift in perceptions of black laborers, who by this point in time were almost entirely slaves.

^{[Journal of Social History 1]}

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