Book on British, Irish and German Indentured Servants and the Colonisation of the US

Clifford Lindsey Alderman, Colonists for Sale: The Story of Indentured Servants in America (New York: MacMillan 1975).

While there’s a considerable amount of literature devoted to the Transatlantic trade in enslaved Black Africans, the role of White indentured servants in the colonisation of America is often overlooked and neglected. These were poor Whites from Britain, Irelands, Germany and Switzerland, who signed on to serve masters in America as unpaid servants for a limited period of time, usually about seven years. Although they weren’t paid, were generally exploited and subject to extremely harsh discipline comparable to Black slaves, they received at the end of their indenture plots of land as well as gifts of clothes, tools and other equipment. When the scheme was first set up in the late 16th and 17th centuries by the chartered companies, the terms were extremely generous. This, however,, succeeded in attracting very few of the poor White emigrants needed to serve as labour as well as populate the newly planted colonies. As a result, the scheme passed into the hands of private merchants,, who had far less scruples and who offered far less generous rewards and incentives for the prospective emigrants. They, however, produced a series of glowing broadsides dwelling on the wealth the New World had to offer in order to entice prospective servants to sign on.

Driving the emigration from Britain, Ireland and Germany was grinding poverty. Germany was recovering from the horrors of the 30 Years War, when a quarter of the population had starved to death as the polyglot armies of Catholic and Protestant princes fought across the German states, as well as the exactions of feudal princes. Similar desperate poverty existed in England, Scotland and Wales. In England a cause of much poverty was the enclosure of common land, where peasants who had held the right to use certain private lands were denied it as the landlords enclosed it for their own use and development. Ireland also suffered from the harsh misrule of English government.

Conditions were harsh and highly exploitative. The book begins with an account of the journey of Mittelburger, a German organ builder who had been hired by a German congregation in Pennsylvania to supply them with an organ and accompany it across the Atlantic. Mittelburger describes the squalid conditions on board and the complete absence of any concern for human life. One man lost his three children as the fell off the gang plank getting on to the ship when it was only sailing up the Rhine collecting its passengers. The servants had to pay for the own food and accommodation at every stop along the way. This ate up their savings, particularly when they stopped to take on supplies and more servants at Rotterdam, an extremely expensive city. More expense was incurred again when the ship stopped at Cowes for more supplies, before crossing the Atlantic. Conditions were cramped and filthy. The food was scant, poor quality and rotten. The drinking water was black and swarming with worms. Boredom and overcrowding resulted in fights. Disease and death was common, with the deceased causally disposed of by being thrown over the side. Once they reached America, the colonists would be sold at the dockside to their new masters. There were a class of colonists, redemptionists, who started with enough money they considered would be enough to pay for their journey. They were sadly mistaken, as the frequent stops consumed all their savings so that they were in debt by the time they landed in America, and had to serve as indentured servants until such time it was paid.

Also exploiting them was a type of slave driver, who would drive the unsold servants around the farms, gradually selling them one by one. One quick-witted Irish chap managed to turn the tables on one of them. He ended up as the last unsold servant, and the slave driver eventually ended the day at an inn, where he took accommodation for himself and the servant. He sold the Irish feller to the landlord, who was looking for a bit of help. The lad got his revenge the next morning when he got up before the slave driver, and pretended that he was him. He warned the landlord that the sleeping slave driver was in fact a tricky indentured servant, who frequently tried to pass himself off as a slave driver. The landlord didn’t know which one was which and was taken in, so that the real slave driver had to do some talking of his own in order to establish his identity. By which time the Irish lad was well away.

Some indentured servants had kindly, generous employers, and prospered. There were even cases where indentured servants tried to take their masters to court, though this was difficult and often sailed because of the sheer difficulty of raising enough money to pay for the litigation. Some fought in the colonial wars against the French and their Indian allies, while others served with distinction in the Continental Army against the British during the Revolution. In some colonies former indentured servants became important politicians and public officials. At one point, about 3/4 quarters of the Virginia legislature were former unfree colonists. Not all colonists could vote, however. The German colonists, particularly in Pennsylvania, were denied the franchise for some time because of fears that they would take over from the British and Irish settlers. I’d have liked to have known a bit more about this, as there is a parallel today with fears about White Brits and Americans being swamped through mass immigration.

The book provides a comprehensive, accessible account of the suffering, hardships and triumphs of these unfree and very frequently exploited servants and settlers. The scheme was compared to slavery at the time. In Ireland it was called ‘the Irish slave trade’, and there is still bitterness about it today. One Canadian girl at Bristol university still felt bitter about how her ancestor had been taken to Canada as a servants by an English aristocrat and then dumped there. A few years ago there was increasing discussion about the Irish slave trade, particularly among Irish nationalists. This awareness of the Irish people’s own past as unfree, exploited servants prevented there from being much sympathy for Black Lives Matter when they went round some Irish communities trying to make them feel guilty about the Irish involvement in the slave trade. I don’t doubt that some Irish ports may have been involved. The trade was so lucrative that many minor parts across Britain were involved, before the trade was monopolised by London, Bristol, Liverpool and some other ports. But the Irish were also practically enslaved. Many of the indentured servants were political prisoners and prisoners of war from the Monmouth Rebellion in southwest England and the various Irish rebellions. These enslaved colonists frequently, and especially the Irish, made common cause with Black slaves and joined their rebellions, or attempted to collaborate with foreign attacks on their colonies.

The blurb for the book runs

‘Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, shiploads of emigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Switzerland landed at American harbors. Poverty and hardship at home had driven them to seek better lives elsewhere. And the colonies were desperately in need of workers to help clear and settle the new land.

‘Many of the new colonists came not as free men, however, but as indentured servants who had agreed to work for a certain number of years without wages in return. for the cost of their transatlantic passage.

‘For some, the system worked well. They were treated decently by their masters, were given generous “freedom dues” at the end of the specified time and went on to become happy and successful citizens. But for others- men, women and children – the articles of indenture were a trap, binding them in virtual slavery to harsh and brutal masters for unexpectedly long periods of time.

”Indentured servants played a vital part in the settlement and development of the American colonies, yet their experiences and the extent of their contributions have been almost forgotten today. In Colonists for Sale, Clifford Lindsey Alderman presents their story in full and fascinating detail: where they were recruited, how they were sold, and to whom; the conditions under which they lived in in each of the colonies; and what happened to them after their terms of servitude were completed.’

The book has the following chapters

1. The Frightful Journey
2. How It Began
3. Spirits and Newlanders
4. Servant Snatching in Ireland and Scotland
5. White Slaves to Virginia
6. How They Fared in Maryland
7. Land of Promise, Often Broken
8. Servants in the Southernmost Colonies
9. New York, the Palatine Fiasco and New Jersey
10. How New England Handled the Servants
11. The Soldiers and Peter Francisco
12. Others Who Made Good
13. A Summing Up

And a section for further reading, bibliography and index.

It wasn’t just in the continental American colonies that the system of indentured servitude was used and exploited. It also operated in the British Caribbean colonies. It was eventually discontinued there as supplies of available land ran out to give to prospective White settlers, and Black slavery taken up instead. However, I’ve been told that you can still which of the former slave cabins on Barbados were occupied by the Irish as they have shamrocks painted on them.