Indentured servant

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An indentured servant is an unfree labourer under contract to work (for a specified amount of time) for another person, often without any pay, but in exchange for accommodation, food, other essentials and/or free passage to a new country.

In North American history, employers usually paid for European workers' passage across the Atlantic Ocean, in return for the servants agreeing to work for a specified number of years. The agreement could also be in exchange for professional training; after being the indentured servant to a blacksmith for several years, you would expect to work as a blacksmith after the period was over. During the 17th century most of the white laborers in Maryland and Virginia came from England this way.

In the United States, indentured servitude was abolished along with slavery when the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed in 1865.

In some modern employment contracts, an employer pays for employee training, and the employee agrees to stay for a year or repay the cost of the training. A related circumstance is called a signing bonus.


  • Indentured servitude was a form of contract labor, usually of a forced nature. One had to give up one's personal freedom for a specified period of time. In some cases it was called "white servitude," but contract labor was not limited just to white European immigrants. People of every race and ethnicity have some history with this form of labor. Many economic historians have written about the incentive compatibility structure, including David Galenson, Farley Grubb, and Abbot Smith.
  • In North America, it was a method of increasing the number of residents/emigrants, especially in the British colonies. Convict labor only provided so many people, and since the journey across the Atlantic was dangerous and disease-stricken resulting in death on every journey, other means of encouraging settlement were necessary. In fact contract-laborers were so important group of people and so numerous that they were mentioned in the Constitution: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons".
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References

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