Blogging from A to Z April Challenge - Letter I

We're halfway through the second week of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.

I recently reviewed a book where the widowed female lead was sold by her husband's family into indentured service and whisked away to the colonies. As I traveled the blogosphere over the last few weeks, I also came across a book about a man sold into indentured service. Looks like this might be gaining popularity in historical fiction right now.

The Virginia Company devised this system in the late 1610s to finance recruitment and transport of workers from England to the colony. If you couldn't afford to book Atlantic passage, you could "borrow" the necessary funds. In return for their passage, room and board during service, and "freedom dues" at the end of the term, servants signed contracts to work for their masters for a certain number of years.

According to The Reader's Companion to American History edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, during the colonial era, 200,000 to 300,000 servants came to North America, accounting for one-half to two-thirds of all European immigrants. Many were teenage boys and girls from poor families who went to work for more prosperous farmers until they married. Though not a form of slavery, servitude was a rough life. They had some legal rights, but they couldn't even marry without an owner's consent and had little control over the conditions and terms of their living and working standards.

Servants were crucial to the colonial economy, but as demands for servants grew and prices rose, African slaves replaced servants in the fields, while those servants moved into positions as craftsmen and domestics.