Question

What is the difference between slavery and indentured servitude? And how did labor force transform from one to the other in the Chesapeake during the 1600s

Answer 1

A slave is a person who is owned by another person like his property, who is made to do all sort of work without getting paid for his services. This condition is called slavery. Slavery had existed throughout the world, there are instances where generation to generation worked as slaves. They had no right and no protection.

An indentured servitude is those workers who worked for specific no of years in lieu of freedom lodging and is eligible for freedom dues. They are different from slaves, slaves are like bonded labor while indentured servitude serves for a certain number of years before getting their freedom. They had some law protecting their rights. They were the production of cheap labor.

Chesapeake had only one crop economy that is tobacco In this plantation they had white indentured servants, to cut the cost of workers they wanted poor Africans as slaves to work on the plantation. The first African John and twenty to thirty others were ought from Portuguese slave ship. In the beginning, they were made to work as indentured servants. but later on, they were made bonded labors like from generation to generation they were being used as a commodity and being passed on by their masters to the next generation as a will. They had no right and no legal status. It took them 200 years to recover from that status. They were made to work harder and longer, their life was miserable they were not given proper food. African slaves were more profitable there was a shift from indentured white servitude to black African thus giving way to racial slavery.