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Signed in but can't access contentOxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian. Institutional account managementFor librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more. Lesson OverviewDownload Activity and Handouts (word doc) The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate to students, using the context of colonial markets for indentured servants, that prices emerge from the choices made by individual people. Video Demonstration:Content Standards addressed:History Standards (from National Standards for History by the National Center for History in the Schools)Era 2: Colonization and Settlement (1585 – 1763) Standard 1: Why the Americas attracted Europeans, why they brought enslaved Africans to their colonies, and how Europeans struggled for control of North America and the Caribbean. 1A: The student understands how diverse immigrants affected the formation of European colonies. Therefore, the student is able to: Explain why so many European indentured servants risked the hardships of bound labor overseas. Standard 3: How the values and institutions of European economic life took root in the colonies, and how slavery reshaped European and African life in the Americas. 3A: The student understands colonial economic life and labor systems in the Americas. Therefore, the student is able to: Identify the major economic regions in the Americas and explain how labor systems shaped them. 3B: The student understands economic life and the development of labor systems in the English colonies. Therefore, the student is able to: Compare the characteristics of free labor, indentured servitude, and chattel slavery. Economics Standards (from Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics)Economics Standard 7: Markets exist when buyers and sellers interact. This interaction determines market prices and thereby allocates scarce goods and services.
Economics Standard 8: Prices send signals and provide incentives to buyers and sellers. When supply or demand changes, market prices adjust, affecting incentives.
Teacher Background:It would be hard to overstate the importance of indentured servitude in populating the American colonies and insuring that the successful nation that emerged from the colonial period looked to England, rather than to France or Spain, for its heritage. By 1775, more than 500,000 Europeans – mainly English, Scotch, Irish, and Germans – had crossed the Atlantic, and over 350,000 of them came as indentured servants. The indenture contract helped to populate the colonies by allowing the prospective emigrant to exchange his labor for Atlantic passage. The price of passage – from £9 -£11 in the early 17th century – was more than the average Englishman earned in a year. Thus, despite the fact that conditions in England made the colonies alluring, to say that the price of the transatlantic voyage was prohibitive for the laboring classes is the most extreme form of understatement. In very real terms, then, indenturing bridged the ocean for the labor necessary to begin the building the American economy. Gary Walton and Hugh Rockoff describe the indenture system in the History of the American Economy: The indenture contract was a device that enabled people to pay for their passage to America by selling their labor to someone in the New World for a specified period of time. These contracts were written in a variety of forms, but law and custom made them similar. Generally speaking, prospective immigrants would sign articles of indenture binding them to a period of service that varied from three to seven years, although four years was probably the most common term. Typically, an indenturer signed with a shipowner or a recruiting agent in England. As soon as the servant was delivered alive at an American port, the contract was sold to a planter or merchant. These contracts typically sold for £10 to £11 in the eighteenth century, nearly double the cost of passage. Indentured servants, thus bound, performed any work their “employers” demanded in exchange for room, board, and certain “freedom dues” of money or land that were received at the end of the period of indenture. . .The first indentures were sent to Jamestown and sold by the Virginia Company: about 100 children in their early teens in 1618, a like number of young women in 1619 for marital purposes, and a young group of workers in 1620. Soon thereafter private agents scoured the ports, taverns, and countryside to sign on workers as indentures. The indentured servants were drawn from a wide spectrum of European society, from the ranks of farmers and unskilled workers, artisans, domestic servants, and others. Most came without specialized skills, but they came to America voluntarily because the likelihood of rising to the status of landowner was very low in Britain or on the Continent. They were also willing to sign indentures because their opportunity cost – the next best use of their time, was typically very low – room and board and low wages as a rural English farm worker, a “servant in husbandry.” Children born in English cottages usually went to work at the age of 10, moving among families and farms until good fortune (often inheritance or gifts) allowed them to marry. For many, a period of bondage for the trip to America seemed worth the risk. (28-30) The process of negotiating for indentures was a form of labor market, but confusion arises if we forget that what is being sold in this market is the passage to America. Labor is the currency of exchange, or, in other words, the price that is being paid for the passage. Thus, the average length of the indenture – the 4 years mentioned in most textbooks – is best understood as a sort of “market clearing price,” paid in labor, for passage to America. As in any market, indenture markets had both buyers and sellers. The buyers were the laborers, trying to use their labor to purchase passage. The sellers were the ship captains and their agents, accepting labor in the form of a signature on an indenture contract, in return for passage. Note, too, that the ship captains and agents were the real risk takers. In order to profit, they had to make sure that the indentured servant arrived in the colonies alive, with enough strength, training, and other desirable qualities to attract the interest of a land owner or merchant willing to purchase the indenture contract. Like other markets for goods and services, the indenture market was affected by conditions of supply and demand. The promise of free land at the end of the indenture period (most colonies offered 50 acre headright land grants to free men) increased the willingness to emigrate, as agricultural workers saw little opportunity to ever own their own land in England. Because wages in the colonies were so much higher than in Europe, skilled workers, craftsmen, artisans, and scholars were also attracted to the cities and seaports of colonial America. Like other markets, the indenture market was dynamic, reacting to changes in society and/or changes in the willingness of individuals to participate. The characteristics of the laborers and/or of the society into which they were indentured affected the length of indenture – and some of those characteristics changed over time.
The success of indenture markets was also dependent on the rule of law. Both parties had to be confident that the terms of the contract would be carried out and that the courts would uphold their rights in the agreement. Without this security, the practice of indenturing based on voluntary participation, would not have persisted. Colonial courts routinely and reliably enforced indenture contracts, evidence of the importance of the practice to American colonists. Employers were fined and/or punished for abuse of indentures or failure to deliver on the promises of food, clothing, and “allowances.” Similarly, employers could depend on the courts to discipline rebellious servants and to punish servants who ran away – often by extending the indenture period. Finally, it should be recognized that just as market forces were responsible for the genesis of the indenture system, so were they responsible for its demise. By the end of the 18th century, the indenture market had virtually disappeared. The reasons for its disappearance can be easily identified:
As students participate in the simulation, they will discover that the 4 year length of indenture mentioned in their textbooks was not the result of whim or decree, but an agreed upon “price” that emerged spontaneously from the voluntary interactions of people participating as buyers and sellers in a market. Activity GuideMaterials:Role cards:
Overhead transparencies:
Student handouts:
Candy (for students to purchase with game points) Procedures:
Debriefing: Teacher Guide
What were the conditions of indentured servitude?Indentured Servitude
Indentured servants were not paid wages but they were generally housed, clothed, and fed. The rights to the individual's labor could be bought and sold, but the servants themselves were not considered property and were free upon the end of their indenture (usually a period of five to seven years).
How did indentured servitude work in the Chesapeake?After the failed experiment with Indians, the Chesapeake land owners turned to indentured servants. Indentured servants were usually young men who signed a contract of four to seven years to work for the master who paid for their trip. After that, they would be free to marry and work for themselves.
Did the Chesapeake colonies have indentured servants?Indenture Contracts:
Until the late 1600s, the labor supply for the Chesapeake plantations was indentured servants, not enslaved Africans. Of the 120,000 emigrants to the Chesapeake colonies in the 1600s, 90,000 were indentured servants.
What role did indentured servants play in the transformation of the Chesapeake in the early seventeenth century?80% of the immigrants coming to the Chesapeake region during the 17th century were indentured servants. In Maryland and Virginia, these immigrants provided the early colonies with needed laborers to support the new and growing tobacco production.
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