Indentured servants, largely young males from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales that is the British Isles , were present from the first year of settlement and continued to arrive in subsequent years. Whatever their occupational backgrounds, most expected to work in agriculture and, until the active growth of the sugar economy in the s, many came voluntarily with some type of contractual agreement.
The shift from small-scale mixed crop farming to an export economy based on the large-scale production of sugar took place fairly rapidly, starting in the early-to-mids. To meet the greater labor demands, sugar planters increasingly relied upon the transatlantic slave trade and the labor of enslaved Africans. Nonetheless, servants continued to arrive and they included more females than in earlier years.
Although their precise numbers are unknown, many servants came with contracts while many thousands of others, including children, arrived without contracts, often having been forced, duped, or lured into servitude in their home countries. At the same time, many thousands more of enslaved Africans were brought to Barbadian shores. Despite similarities in terms of labor exploitation, important legal and socioeconomic factors highlight the distinctions between the two systems of labor.
Usually they contracted their labor for five to seven years, sometimes less, sometimes more, in exchange for the Atlantic passage and food, clothing, and shelter during their indenture period for clear explanations of indentured servitude, see Galenson Over time dependence on enslaved labor increased as sugar plantations dominated the landscape, and fewer servants voluntarily came to the island. Many early servants had volunteered to migrate, but Britain England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were also the source for many thousands of coerced or involuntary servants.
Both voluntary and involuntary servants coexisted during most of the seventeenth century although the proportions and numbers of each at different time periods are unknown. Involuntary servitude was impressed upon vagrants or vagabonds, as defined by repressive sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Vagrancy laws. Thousands of children and teenagers from Ireland and Britain were kidnapped and shipped to the Americas, mainly to the sugar colonies Blake Roughly 10, Scottish, English, Irish, and even German prisoners from the Battle of Worcester, the final battle of the English Civil War, were also transported to the Americas as servants Royle Prisoners of war and political prisoners could be sold for up to ten years of service, much longer than the customary five to seven years.
In , a group of Barbados planters claimed they employed 12, prisoners of war Planters of Barbados Surely there were more servants at this period, including women and children, and one can assume that servants were even more numerous in earlier years e. Moreover, there are no figures or authoritative estimates in the primary sources on the numbers both voluntary and involuntary who came to the island during this period.
The friction between the Irish and English in Barbados was fuelled by tensions that had begun many years earlier in Ireland, and were surely exacerbated by labor conditions in Barbados, the treatment that indentured servants experienced, and their reactions to this treatment.
These reactions included occasional violence against individual English masters, absenteeism and escapes from the island, as well as joining with slaves in several revolt plots and other forms of collective resistance. Despite general similarities in their material lives and work regimens, it is difficult, if not futile, to meaningfully compare the living conditions of slaves and servants over the seventeenth century. In any case, some contemporary accounts indicate the actual treatment of servants could be quite severe, even vicious at times.
In addition to Ligon, only a handful of seventeenth-century first-hand accounts are known in which servants, ex-servants, and foreign visitors briefly describe the lives of servants; none of these accounts is by the Irish. To be clear, however, this is not to suggest that indentured servants were not subjected to hard labor or did not suffer, particularly prisoners of war and others forced into servitude. In this context, we believe it is crucial to discuss the legal distinctions and their implications for the lives of these two groups.
This was arguably the case with Rivers and Foyle and probably many others of their social class who were forced into servitude. Taking them at their word, Rivers and Foyle were unfairly arrested and badly mistreated in Barbados, but they could still claim legal rights as Englishmen, something no enslaved African could do. Additionally, Barbadian laws that affected servants did not differentiate among them based on national origins, implicitly providing all servants, including the Irish, with similar legal recourse.
Rivers and Foyle emphasized that their condition was unacceptable given their English citizenship and identity, a point agreed upon by some members of Parliament. The rights that servants could claim in Barbados were often muted in the face of social realities and their relative powerlessness in the face of a judicial and legal system that heavily favored the planter class e. In fact, slaves had no legally recognized rights. They were regarded as private property over which owners claimed absolute authority, a fundamental characteristic of slave status in all New World slave societies.
If an owner intervened with the colonial authorities or other owners on behalf of a slave accused of some transgression, it was not because the slave had any rights, but because the owner was protecting his property rights. Servants, in contrast, could be claimed as property only for the period of their indentures, during which time their masters controlled both their laboring and nonlaboring hours e. These were critical features of New World slavery and highlight major structural distinctions between slavery and indentured servitude. By contrast, servitude was not heritable.
Both servants and slaves required written permission from masters to leave the plantation or place of their residence, a widespread restriction in early English America. After their indenture periods were over, however, servants were free and could leave the island if they had the resources; slaves had no such option and no slave could ever legally leave Barbados without permission from an owner or civil authority.
Efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of servants who were already there. Regardless of how futile such complaints might have been in many cases, it would have been unthinkable to grant a similar right to the enslaved. Even before passage of this law, a servant of any national origin could institute a legal proceeding against a master in the event of mistreatment or disagreement over the indenture terms; one might even sue for freedom, something no slave could do. A slave never could have brought a master to court, let alone win a case against him; moreover, slaves could never testify against Whites in any legal proceeding, a right held by servants as with any other white person free people of color were denied this right from until ; Handler While many servants had come voluntarily with contracts specifying their terms of service, many others came without contracts.
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It seems to have usually applied to disputes concerning lease agreements between landowners and farming tenants. These laws provide clear evidence of the explicit distinctions between servants and slaves, regardless of how the laws were enforced in practice.
By the economic significance of servants was diminishing as enslaved Africans were increasingly replacing them in the labor force. In September of that year two major pieces of legislation were enacted, one governed servants, the other the enslaved; these laws well illustrate the sociolegal distinctions between the two groups. Other scholars have discussed the laws Dunn In the eyes of the law, a servant was a servant. The servant law was quite stringent; yet, it afforded servants limited rights which had not been specified in earlier laws.
Some clauses well illustrate the differences in their legal status from that of the enslaved. A slave, in contrast, served for life and could not sue for freedom or question the duration of servitude; in fact, not until could a slave testify in the courts against a white person. A servant could also institute a legal proceeding against a master in the event of mistreatment or disagreement over the terms of indenture, an option completely unavailable to the enslaved Hall Penalties for the same or similar crimes were also different.
A servant convicted of assaulting a master or mistress was to serve one year beyond the indenture term. On the other hand, it was not until July that the intentional killing of a slave was considered murder, punishable by death. Servants were accused of participating in plots or rebellions in , the mids, and Handler The penalties could be quite severe, particularly for repeat offenders.
A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes - Richard Ligon - Google Книги
Punishments specified in the laws included public execution, presumably by hanging, for repeat offenders and certain long-term escapees , severe whipping, and branding. Captured fugitives could be confined to plantation dungeons or placed in stocks for whatever period the slave master ordered. The whip was regularly used. Although the maximum number of lashes for particular offenses varied in the laws over the entire period of slavery, there is no indication that slave masters felt legally or otherwise constrained or that such laws were enforced.
Certain common disciplinary measures were not defined in law, but became well established in custom. Punishments could also include gibbeting and burning alive, decapitation, and castration for serious crimes, such as participation in revolts or plots. Such harsh penalties were apparently reserved for the enslaved; we have no evidence they were applied to servants although both servants and slaves could be whipped and placed in stocks.
For the British Caribbean, however, the earliest mention of which we are aware is in an article in a British Guiana newspaper Ellis Its author, Alfred B. Ellis, was a British Army officer who had been at one time stationed in the West Indies see Ellis Additionally, his claim is more of an interpretation of the alleged treatment and material conditions under which these individuals lived rather than being an assessment based on the many sociolegal differences between servitude and slavery. Although Newman places the phrase within quotation marks, it is unclear from his writing how literally he interprets it.
In any event, he surprisingly concludes: Today, not a tear is shed for the sufferings of millions of our own enslaved forefathers. Online publications and social media forums have been particularly fertile breeding grounds for sentiments that are largely politically-oriented and based on questionable and superficial historical research. This is a FACT! The narrative has been used to undermine arguments in favor of reparations for the injustices of slavery. The limitations of the documentary record, both quantitative and qualitative, make it difficult to determine with any certainty the degree to which the lives of seventeenth-century servants and slaves coincided or differed in Barbados.
Both groups had difficult lives and suffered wide-ranging hardships.
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This article is not meant to minimize the plight of voluntary or involuntary servants, particularly the latter, or the oppressive conditions under which many lived. However, there is no indication that indentured servants were considered slaves as slavery was understood in seventeenth-century Barbados.
Some may have viewed themselves as slaves metaphorically, as we noted earlier in the case of the Royalists Rivers and Foyle, but in the eyes of the English crown, colonial authorities, the Barbadian plantocracy, and English and Barbados legal systems, no resident European was ever considered a slave.
Moreover, their comparisons invariably rest on the alleged treatment of servants who were forcibly sent to the West Indies and not to the many who had voluntarily agreed to migrate, an experience they obviously did not share with enslaved Africans. Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, — University of North Carolina Press.
Hakluyt Society, , pp. The Law of Usages and Customs. Minutes of the Barbados Council. Crime and Punishment in England: University College London Press. Sugar and White Servitude: Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, — University of Tennessee Press. A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-state. Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide. University of West Indies Press. University of West Indies Press, pp.
The Vagrancy Problem in England, — Peter Hay, Proprietary Agent in Barbados, — Jamaican Historical Review 5: Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 32 The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Bird, James Barry, Usually ships within 1 to 3 months. The true and exact history of the island of Barbadoes, Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
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