WI: Africans in the 13 Colonies Remained Indentured Servants, No Transition to Slavery

So, the initial transition from Africans operating as indentured servants in the early Thirteen Colonies to full fledged slavery took decades and a series of law suits and eventually laws. What if the transition never happened and Africans arriving in the Colonies continued to be treated as indentured servants for a period of years with their children never being slaves as well.
 
With so many free black people running around racism would be lessened at the least. Also, does this mean that the way is open for white indentured servants? Slaves couldn't be brought in from Europe, but plenty of Europeans would be used to such a set-up. Having their kids go free would be an improvement for a fair lot of them.
 
With so many free black people running around racism would be lessened at the least. Also, does this mean that the way is open for white indentured servants? Slaves couldn't be brought in from Europe, but plenty of Europeans would be used to such a set-up. Having their kids go free would be an improvement for a fair lot of them.

Tons of Europeans came to the Colonies as indentured servants from the founding of Jamestown all the way up to the amendment abolishing slavery and indentured servitude
 
With so many free black people running around racism would be lessened at the least. Also, does this mean that the way is open for white indentured servants? Slaves couldn't be brought in from Europe, but plenty of Europeans would be used to such a set-up. Having their kids go free would be an improvement for a fair lot of them.

I guess that depends alot on just how "expensive" the European servents would be in terms of freedom dues and maitenmaince vs. a slavery-in-all-but-name policy of buying up bondsmen's/debtors service contracts from African leaders, as well as just how strongly colonial courts would enforce black bondsmen's rights vs their white counterparts. After all, most slaves sold were debtors or prisoners of war, so there's really only a few differences between buying up that debt/the price of ransom in exchange for x years of service and outright purchase of slaves. The main difference between buying a bondsman and indenturing a servent would be the former requires payment up front entirely in tangible goods, while the later has the cost mainly on the back end and can be paid for in a great part with land/not portable property.

Given that early on colonies often granted free land to those bringing in settlers and potential sponsors would need to plow liquid capital into setting up their estates, that gives a natural advantage to indenture early on, while once a colony grows more developed, land grants dry up, and what property you do possess becomes more profitable as contacts are made, production/refining facilities are set up, you find the best cultivation practices ect. it makes more and more sense to shift to bondsmen. Of course, that means you get a larger population of free, poor whites as the question of just what rights the bondsmen are going to get come up, and they're liable to not want to empower the competition...
 
From Wikipedia on Indentured Servants:

“Between one-half and two-thirds of European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies between the 1630s and the American Revolution came under indentures.[5] The practice was sufficiently common that the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, in part, prevented imprisonments overseas; it also made provisions for those with existing transportation contracts and those "praying to be transported" in lieu of remaining in prison upon conviction.[12] In any case, while half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies had been indentured servants, at any one time they were outnumbered by workers who had never been indentured, or whose indenture had expired. Free wage labour was more common for Europeans in the colonies.[13]Indentured persons were numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them. The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was about 500,000-550,000; of these 55,000 were involuntary prisoners. Of the 450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that 48% were indentured.[14] About 75% were under the age of 25. The age of legal adulthood for men was 24 years; those over 24 generally came on contracts lasting about 3 years.[1]Regarding the children who came, Gary Nash reports that, "many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labour once in America."[15]

Farmers, merchants, and shopkeepers in the British colonies found it very difficult to hire free workers, primarily because it was easy for potential workers to set up their own farms.[16]Consequently, a common solution was to transport a young worker from Britain or a German state, who would work for several years to pay off the debt of their travel costs. During the indenture period the servants were not paid cash wages, but were provided with food, accommodation, clothing and training. The indenture document specified how many years the servant would be required to work, after which they would be free. Terms of indenture ranged from one to seven years with typical terms of four or five years.[2] In southern New England, a variant form of indentured servitude, which controlled the labour of Native Americans through an exploitative debt-peonage system, developed in the late 17th century and continued through to the period of the American Revolution.

Not all European servants came willingly. Several instances of kidnapping for transportation to the Americas are recorded, though these were often indentured in the same way as their willing counterparts. An illustrative example is that of Peter Williamson (1730–1799). As historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out, "Although efforts were made to regulate or check their activities, and they diminished in importance in the eighteenth century, it remains true that a certain small part of the white colonial population of America was brought by force, and a much larger portion came in response to deceit and misrepresentation on the part of the spirits [recruiting agents]."[6]

Many white immigrants arrived in colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money.[17] The captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture, the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly acquired skills to pursue a trade.[18][19][20] A few became sufficiently prosperous that they were eventually able to acquire indentured servants of their own.[21]

Given the high death rate, many servants did not live to the end of their terms.[2] In the 18th and early 19th century, numerous Europeans, mostly from outside the British Isles, traveled to the colonies as redemptioners, a particularly harsh form of indenture.[22]

Indentured servants were a separate category from bound apprentices. The latter were American-born children, usually orphans or from an impoverished family who could not care for them. They were under the control of courts and were bound out to work as an apprentice until a certain age. Two famous bound apprentices were Benjamin Franklin who illegally fled his apprenticeship to his brother, and Andrew Johnson, who later became President of the United States.[23]

George Washington used indentured servants;[24] in April 1775, he offered a reward for the return of two runaway white servants.[25]

DevelopmentEdit
Indentured servitude in the Americas was first used by the Virginia Company in the early seventeenth century as a method for collateralising the debt finance for transporting people to its newfound British colonies.

Before the rise of indentured servitude, a large demand for labour existed in the colonies to help build settlements, farm crops and serve as tradesmen, but many labourers in Europe could not afford the transatlantic crossing, which could cost roughly half a worker’s annual wage.[3]

European financial institutions could not easily lend to the workers since there was no effective way to enforce a loan from across the Atlantic, rendering labour immobile via the Atlantic because of capital market imperfections.[3]

To address this imperfection, the Virginia Company would allow labourers to borrow against their future earnings at the Virginia Company for a fixed number of years in order to raise sufficient capital to pay for their voyage. Evidence shows this practice was in use by 1609, only two years after the founding of the Virginia Company's original Jamestown settlement.[26] However, this practice created a financial risk for the Virginia Company. If workers died or refused to work, the investment would be lost.[26]

By 1620, the Virginia Company switched to selling contracts of "one hundred servants to be disposed amongst the old Planters" as soon as the servants reached the colonies.[27] This minimised risk on its investment to the 2–3 months of transatlantic voyage. As the system gained in popularity, individual farmers and tradesmen would eventually begin investing in indentured servants as well.[28]

In the 18th century, wages in Great Britain were low because of a surplus of labour. The average monetary wage was about 50 shillings (£2.50, equivalent to £344 in 2016)[29] a year for a plowman, and 40 shillings (£2) a year for an ordinary unskilled worker. Ships' captains negotiated prices for transporting and feeding a passenger on the seven- or eight-week journey across the ocean, averaging about £5 to £7, the equivalent of years of work back in England.[30][31]

Still, demand for indentured labour remained relatively low until the adoption of staple crops, such as sugarcane in the West Indies or tobacco in the American South.[32] With economies largely based on these crops, the West Indies and American South would see the vast majority of indentured labour.[33]

Author and historian Richard Hofstadter has written:


Over time the market for indentured servitude developed, with length of contracts showing close correlations to indicators of health and productivity. Tall, strong, healthy, literate or skilled servants would often serve shorter terms than less productive or more sickly servants.[35][36] Similarly, destinations with harsh working climates such as the West Indies would come to offer shorter contracts compared to the more hospitable colonies.[32]

The majority of indentured servants ended up in the American South, where cash crops necessitated labour-intensive farming. As the Northern colonies moved toward industrialisation, they got significantly less indentured immigration.[37] For example, 96.28% of English emigrants to Virginia and Maryland from 1773 to 1776 were indentured servants. During the same time period, only 1.85% of English emigrants to New Englandwere indentured.[38]
 

Lusitania

Donor
You could end up with less females being brought over since their children be free unless you start charging parent for each child. So that people never free of debt and be bonded for life. Plus kids now forced to carry their parents debt.

So you end up with slavery in every way except in name. Depends on what the people in power decide to implement
 
You could end up with less females being brought over since their children be free unless you start charging parent for each child. So that people never free of debt and be bonded for life. Plus kids now forced to carry their parents debt.

So you end up with slavery in every way except in name. Depends on what the people in power decide to implement

How long would the large landowners maintain that system though? I look at British Barbados as an example of willing change and Haiti as a matter of putting off reform until it was too late. In the former case, the planter elite noticed that the situation was getting bad enough for the small white farmers and the slaves reaching such a critical mass that they faced a real risk of not having enough bodies with a stake in the system to fill out the militas, and so implimented reforms to attract and secure the loyalty of European settlers. In Haiti, on the other hand, the Big White refusal to give the Small White or Free Coloreds a suitable stake in the social and economic status quo, which resulted in them turning against one another and opening up the door to a slave uprising.
 

Lusitania

Donor
How long would the large landowners maintain that system though? I look at British Barbados as an example of willing change and Haiti as a matter of putting off reform until it was too late. In the former case, the planter elite noticed that the situation was getting bad enough for the small white farmers and the slaves reaching such a critical mass that they faced a real risk of not having enough bodies with a stake in the system to fill out the militas, and so implimented reforms to attract and secure the loyalty of European settlers. In Haiti, on the other hand, the Big White refusal to give the Small White or Free Coloreds a suitable stake in the social and economic status quo, which resulted in them turning against one another and opening up the door to a slave uprising.
Yes correct but the Carribean then changed the type of people they would recruit. They started bringing in the Indians. I wonder why? Was it to offset the number of blacks and not increased that demographic.
 
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