Pamphlets were written to encourage servants and the poor in England to emigrate to the New World. The English became painfully aware of the poverty problem. During these times of extreme poverty and unemployment, the proletariat class was forming in England. The people who emigrated first were not the desperate poor or the indigent, how could they afford a ticket aboard a vessel to the New World? The first were free men, paying their own way , either with family fortune leftovers or selling their belongings to raise the capital.
Firstly, all the men including the indentured servants who journeyed to America were unprepared for the living condition in which they would find themselves. None of the travelers were seasoned to Virginia's climate, or the malaria they would encounter. So Virginia was killing off the labour force of England as soon as they set foot in America, even as late as the 1630s. But after the 1640s, the population stabilized and began to grow. This growth of the population made land acquisition more diificult among people living and surviving in the New World.
Many small planters found themselves unalble to pay quitrents (2 shillings per acre rent) on their headright lands; moving up the social ladder by planting was increasingly difficult. Slaves were more typically used in unskilled field work, and servants serving out their indentureships were the overseers, or the skilled labourers on the plantations. The first large tobacco boom drove the prices of tobacco down in the global market, depressing wages and freedmen's purchasing power. This inflation drove many freedmen back to the larger plantations and more affluent planters for their livelihood. Some were even forced to return to indentured servitude to support their families, until they could afford land of their own.
Teacher Outline for Indentured Servitude
Sources: Virginius Dabney: Virginia: The New Dominion; David Allan Williams: Colonial Virginia; Abbot Smith: Colonists in Bondage.
Return to Lesson Plan on The Life and Trials of the Indentured Servant