Circulation and trafficking of persons. Indentured servants in the Thirteen British Colonies of North America. 17th century

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyse the movement and traffic of people in the Thirteen English Colonies of North America during the 17th century, through the system of indentured servitude. This system originated in England as a way of employing the population that had no trade or employment. Indentured servitude involved working for a master for a specified period, usually between 4 and 9 years, in exchange for room and board and a promise of 50 acres of land at the end of the contract. This paper focuses mainly on female indentured servants and children. Women indentured servants faced a state of double vulnerability, being victims of sexual abuse and in turn being punished with the extension of their contract or, depending on the severity of their offence, with physical punishment if they became pregnant, since the period of gestation was considered lost work time and they had to repay their master for his investment. As for the children, they were often orphans or illegitimate children, handed over by their parents or authorities to orphanages as apprentices. In turn, the paper also makes a distinction between European serfs and Native Americans, who, unlike European contract serfs, did not have the possibility of access to land or a fixed term for their contract, but rather were subject to a system of slavery in which children and women, they were forcibly baptised and stripped of their culture and languages as part of a strategy of forced acculturation. Both systems, with their legal and practical inequalities, persisted until the independence of the thirteen colonies.