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- Title
THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: ENGLISH SERVITUDE COMES TO AMERICA IN FOUNDING VIRGINIA.
- Authors
STEPHENS, TIM
- Abstract
When the colony of Virginia was founded in 1607, it was built upon a system of "unfree labor" that was bound by a contract known as an "indenture." In order to build a thriving and profitable colony, England needed cheap labor and sent thousands upon thousands of (primarily) men to America as indentured servants with contracts of a certain time period. Indentured servitude benefited the Virginia Company of London, the entity that initially owned the Virginia colony; investors who received land for each indentured that they sent to America; and the poor of England who received free passage and eventually became the founders of the colony. When the first documented Africans arrived in 1619, they arrived at a time period in which the English system of indentured servitude was vital to the economic viability of the colony. The first documented Africans were not described as slaves, but they were also not free; they were a new labor resource with critical skills that would ensure the colony succeeded. Their offspring would later be subject to a system of race-based slavery invented in English North America.
- Subjects
ENGLAND; SLAVERY; TIME measurements; DEEDS (Law)
- Publication
Journal of the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, 2019, Vol 36, p68
- ISSN
0272-1937
- Publication type
Article