Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies, by Anna Suranyi

Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies by Anna Suranyi (2021) provides an excellent overview of English indentured servitude, providing both a chronology across primarily the seventeenth century--when the institution was at its zenith in Colonial America--and more detailed analysis of the experiences of those who found themselves in this system. Two-thirds of those in indentured servitude were men, as their labor was considered more valuable than that of women. That said, Suranyi makes clear that women suffered unique challenges and forms of abuse--including sexual and physical assault. Women were also, according to the English legal concept of coverture, under the guardianship of their father or their husband, and lived in a state of second-class status.

Those who endured this form of bound service broke down into different subgroups. First, there were those men and women who voluntarily chose to contract themselves to service, with hopes of a better life and more opportunities in America (Suranyi's book also underscores the chasm betweeen how indentured servitude was sold to this population through advertisements and opportunists).

There was yet another group, which could yet be broken down further: those who found themselves under contract and sent to North America against their will. This population was made up of criminals condemned to service by judicial decree on the one hand, and children on the other. Among the criminal element, some were indeed persons who were habitual breakers of English law, yet other criminals were simply those living in poverty who had, in one way or another, committed some act of vagrancy. Being poor was essentially a crime in England, especially London, and the government would routinely sweep the neighborhoods and arrest those found to be homeless, hungry, and without help. This meant that the children of such persons would be contracted out, either in the homeland or to America, so as not to be a burden on society. Thus, many children who found themselves in these circumstances were the children of a parent or parents who committed the crime of poverty. Some children were orphans. Other children, however, would be duped by people looking to make a buck in this system, while still other children were simply captured, taken, and put onto ships heading for the Americas. The author observes the rise of the expressions spirited away and kidnapping during the era because of this phenomenon. Children who found themselves in this system were also often held to longer service. Most indentures would serve four or five years, sometimes seven, and--if circumstances required--may choose to re-indenture themselves for another set of years. Children were indentured until the age of twenty-one, regardless of their age at the beginning of service. The author notes one account discovered in the research of a child indenture bound from the age of three.

Indentured servants bound for America were thus a combination of men and women (most were men in their late teens or early twenties), adults and children, and voluntary contractors looking for a better future or involuntary cogs in a machine who found themselves held to service due to crimes of one sort or another or for not being the age of majority.  

Despite the varous and numerous struggles indentures found themselves in, however, Suranyi makes clear that the differences between them and African slaves ultimately meant a world of difference. Though indentures were bound to service, and certainly many were mistreated and abused, they were nevertheless regarded as citizens and thus possessed certain legal rights which the colonial courts actually gave considerable consideration to. Many would challenge the treatment they endured by their masters in court proceedings and challenge masters who would refuse to free them at the end of their contract. Indentures thus possessed legal power because they were bound to a legal system with formalized rules where they were assumed to be--to some degree--equal partners in a legal relationship and had access to courts who would hear and adjudicate their grievances. African slaves had nothing of the sort. Furthermore, indentures were held in a temprorary state of bondage. Their indenture would eventually run its course, however unpleasant, and it should be appreciated how differently this would impact one's psychology alone. Indentures could always imagine a day when they would be free. Enlaved Africans had a far different, and far less hopeful fate. The term All Night Forever, later made popular among enslaved African Americans, seems to underscore this very different psychology. For them, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. 

The fate of indentures was also different not only because they eventually earned their freedom, but they would also earn material gains as part of their emancipation, in the form of freedom laws. Initially, these freedom laws were quite generous, in that many indentures gained livestock, tools, possibly even a house and/or a plot of land (Suranyi observes that it was not uncommon for early indentures in Virginia to gain fifty acres following the end of their servitude). These freedom laws would decrease in their generosity and material value over time, as land became more prized and as African enslavement would overtake the institution of indentured servitude.

Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies by Anna Suranyi is a valuable work for those who desire a deeper understanding of the role and realities of indentured servitude in early America.