Indentured servitude appeared in Virginia by 1620. Initially a device used to transport European workers to the New World, over time servitude dwindled as black slavery grew in importance in the British colonies. Indentured servitude reappeared in the Americas in the mid-nineteenth century as a means of transporting Asians to the Caribbean sugar islands and South America following the abolition of slavery. Servitude then remained in legal use until its abolition in 1917. This paper provides an economic analysis of the innovation of indentured servitude, describes the economic forces that caused its decline and disappearance from the British colonies, and considers why indentured servitude was revived for migration to the West Indies during the time of the great free migration of Europeans to the Americas.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Contact details of provider: Postal: The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU UK Fax: +44 (0)1223 325150 Email: Web page: http://journals.cambridge.org/jid_JEH
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Mike Eden).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)