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External WebsitesSanat Pai Raikar is a quizmaster and writer based out of Bangalore, India. His first quiz book, Three's A Quiz, was written from memory. Sanat has cofounded Quizarre, which provides quiz, crossword.
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Jul 11, 2024 • Article History Table of Contents
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indentured labor, a form of contract labor in which laborers enter into an official agreement with their employer certifying that they will work for the employer either for a fixed length of time or until a debt has been paid. The debt is usually understood to include the costs that the employer charges the worker for transport from their home location as well as for housing and food. It may also include costs associated with the apprenticeship or other training that is, ostensibly, provided by the employer. Often, indentured workers make agreements unwillingly or unknowingly and are exploited by their employers. Historically, indentured labor was sometimes imposed on criminals who agreed to servitude in exchange for a commutation of their sentence.
Indentured labor is today associated with the era of European colonization, beginning about 1500 and extending into the 20th century, though forms of indentured labor still exist. Its conditions were often severe enough to resemble slavery, even if local laws may have differentiated between slavery and indentured labor. The boundaries between indentured labor, debt slavery, peonage, and other forms of forced labor can be difficult to discern, and, in terms of the workers’ lived experience, these differences were frequently meaningless.
The history of indentured labor reaches back to ancient times, when people typically became indentured servants after borrowing money and agreeing to pay off the debt over a specified term.
In central India, land grant records dating from the Gupta period (4th to 6th century ce ) show that lower-class people had to supply labor, as a form of service, to their king, though whether their labor was mandatory is subject to debate. Such labor was usually provided by blacksmiths, barbers, potters, carpenters, and others in lieu of taxes payable to the king (or, in some cases, to the grantees of the land). Lower-class workers were also often subject to bonded labor during the 8th to 13th century, typically because of a failure to pay a debt, rent, or taxes. Such bondage often continued across several generations.
Indentured labor was first used in North America to attract workers to the new English colonies after the establishment of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Many skilled and unskilled laborers, as well as some petty criminals, worked four to six years for colonial settlers in exchange for passage to the New World, along with room and board, all paid for by the settlers. The laborers were not enslaved, and some laws were in place to protect their rights. But the work conditions were harsh, and workers’ contracts were usually extended for such infractions as breaking laws, running away, or becoming pregnant. Those who survived their tenure received their freedom, allowing them to pursue their own goals in the new colonies.
The first Black Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619 and were initially treated as indentured laborers with the same rights as white people. But the passage of laws that treated Black people as property, rather than as people—which happened in Massachusetts in 1641, when its legislature legalized slavery, and happened in other American colonies across subsequent decades, when their laws also recognized slavery—stripped away whatever relative freedom Black laborers had experienced until then.
