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The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: an Economic Analysis Author(S): David W

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The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: an Economic Analysis Author(S): David W Economic History Association The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis Author(s): David W. Galenson Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 1-26 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2120553 Accessed: 16/09/2010 12:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and Economic History Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Economic History. http://www.jstor.org THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY VOLUME XLIV MARCH 1984 NUMBER I The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis DAVID W. GALENSON Indentured servitude appeared in Virginia by 1620. Initially a device used to transportEuropean workers to the New World, over time servitudedwindled as black slavery grew in importancein the British colonies. Indenturedservitude reappeared in the Americas in the mid-nineteenth century as a means of transportingAsians to the Caribbeansugar islands and South Americafollowing the abolitionof slavery. Servitudethen remainedin legal use until its abolitionin 1917. This paper provides an economic analysis of the innovationof indentured servitude, describes the economic forces that caused its decline and disappear- ance from the British colonies, and considers why indentured servitude was revived for migrationto the West Indies duringthe time of the greatfree migration of Europeansto the Americas. INDENTURED servitude appeared in use in Virginia by 1620, little more than a decade after the initial British settlement of North America at Jamestown. Servitude became a central institution in 'the economy and society of many parts of colonial British America; a leading historian of indenturedservitude in the colonial period, Abbot Emerson Smith, estimated that between one-half and two-thirds of all white immigrantsto the British colonies between the Puritanmigration of the 1630s and the Revolution came under indenture.' Although it Journal of Economic History, Vol. XLIV, No. I (March 1984). ? The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507. The authoris Associate Professorof Economics, Universityof Chicago,Chicago, Illinois 60637, and is a Research Associate, National Bureauof Economic Research. He is gratefulto Stanley Engermanfor discussions of the issues treatedin this paper, and to AndrewAbel, YoramBarzel, James Buchanan, Charlotte Erickson, Robert Fogel, Alice Galenson, Robert Gallman, Farley Grubb,Jonathan Hughes, MichaelJensen, Douglass North, JonathanPincus, Joe Reid, Theodore W. Schultz, Gordon Tullock, and John Wallis for comments and suggestions. Patricia Cloud providedcapable research assistance. Earlierversions of the paperwere presentedat a seminarat the Center for Study of Public Choice, VirginiaPolytechnic Institute, at the Economic History Workshop,University of Chicago,and at the LibertyFund Conference on EconomicOrganization in Theory and History, Port Ludlow. Washington.July, 1983. ' Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776(Chapel Hill, 1947), p. 336. 1 2 Galenson dwindled in importance over time, servitude continued to exist in mainlandNorth America until at least the fourth decade of the nine- teenth century. In that same decade, indenturedservitude was brought back into large-scale use in the West Indies and parts of South Amer- ica.2 It remained in legal use in those areas until 1917. This paper will consider some of the central economic factors underlyingthe appearanceand disappearanceof indenturedservitude in the Americas. The following section will provide an economic analysis of the innovation of indenturedservitude and of the problemsthe early English settlers solved in order to make servitude a useful institution. Subsequentsections will then consider how and why servitude declined in importance and disappeared from the English West Indies and mainlandNorth America duringthe late eighteenthand early nineteenth centuries, as well as why the institution was revived in the Caribbean and South America in the mid-nineteenthcentury. The broadpurpose of this paper is an economic interpretation of specific institutional changes; the paper seeks to provide a basis for understandingthe economic forces that initially created and molded an institution that played a major role in American labor markets for three centuries, as well as the forces that later led to the disappearanceof that institution.3 THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ORIGINS OF INDENTURED SERVITUDE IN NORTH AMERICA Perhaps the most critical economic problemfacing early investors in the VirginiaCompany and the settlers they sent to North Americain the decade after 1607was that of recruitingand motivatinga laborforce. An institutional solution to this problem, the system of indentured servi- tude, emerged after a series of experiments by the Company. A brief review of the historical context within which the settlement of Virginia occurred, and of the sequence of adaptationsintroduced by the Compa- ny, will demonstrate how and why this solution was reached. Recent estimates indicate that a majority of all hired labor in 2 Indentured,or contract, labor was also used elsewhere in the nineteenth century, as, for example, significantmovements of boundworkers occurred within Asia. This paperwill not treat these episodes, but will focus only on migrationsto the Americas. 3 Throughoutthis paper, with reference to indenturedservitude the term "institution"will be used broadlyto refer to the sets of practicesand rules-including both statuteand commonlaw- thatgoverned the use of laborcontracts written for specifiedperiods and enteredinto by workersin order to finance migration.Contracts of servitude typically differedfrom hire labor contracts in specifyingrelatively long terms-e.g., in the colonialperiod four years or more-and by involvinga greaterdegree of controlof the worker'sliving and workingconditions by the employer,and from debt contractsof service in failingto providefor automaticdissolution of the agreementat any time upon repaymentof a stated principal sum by the worker. These differences tended to make indenturedservitude a distinctivestatus at most times and places, with a set of rules and practices specific to it, although of course these might differ among particularepisodes, or for a single episode over time. Indentured Servitude in the Americas 3 preindustrial England was provided by "servants in husbandry"- youths of both sexes, normallybetween the ages of 13 and 25, who lived and worked in the households of their masters, typically on annual contracts.4 In view of the pervasiveness of service in husbandryas a source of labor supply in seventeenth-century England, it is not surprisingthat the notion of moving that institutionto Americaoccurred to members of the Virginia Company when the results of their initial efforts to recruit a sustained flow of adult workers to their colony proved disappointing.5Several problems had to be solved, however, before the English institution could be successfully transplantedto the New World;in their solution lay the origins of the system of indentured servitude. The most obvious of these problems was that of the transportation costs of the settlers. Passage fares to Virginiain the early seventeenth century were high relative to the annual wages of English servants in husbandryor hired agriculturallaborers, and few prospective migrants were able to pay the cost of their voyage out of their own accumulated savings, or those of their families.6 Existing English capital market institutionswere patently inadequateto cope with the problem, consid- ering difficulties that included the high transactions costs entailed in making loans to individuals and enforcing them at a distance of 3,000 miles. The VirginiaCompany's solution was to use its own funds to fill the gap left by this unavailability of capital from other sources-by advancing the cost of passage to prospective settlers. The Company's advance took the form of a loan to the migrants, who contracted to repay this debt out of their net earnings in America.7 4 PeterLaslett, The WorldWe Have Lost, Second edition(London, 1971),Ch. 1;Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandryin Early ModernEngland (Cambridge,1981); also Alan Macfarlane,The Originsof English Individualism(New York, 1979). 5 On early attempts
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