RE THIS RECENT POST TOPIC:
SO WHEN DID WHITE OR BLACK OR YELLOW AD HOC SLAVERY INDENTURED SERVITUDE IN AMERICA FINALLY END
Americans know little of this complex history; they think mainly of black slavery and of the Civil War.
There were huge numbers. Huge numbers of whites of all kinds came over under indentures, or were transported as prisoners of war, or as convicts sentenced to transportation.
A high proportion of indentured servants, especially in the 17th Century, died before their contracts ended. Many had been offered acreage at the end of their indenture, to lure them to come. Some actually collected.
Allison has a poignant passage in one of his lectures, Before 1776, on the fate of those who did not, and on what happened to the land they had been trying to live to get.
Especially those sent to the West Indies sugar islands, indentured or whatever, did not last long. Black slaves died there too in droves, although they were better able to stand the climate.
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