Tiêu đề Forms of Labour - Indigenous tribes, Indentured Labour, Slavery.pdf ✅

QUES- EXPLAIN THE IMPOTANCE OF INDIGENOUS TRIBE, INDENTURED LABOUR AND THE SLAVES IN THE MAKING OF EARLY COLONIAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA. Forms of Labour in Colonial America  Indigenous Tribes  Indentured Labour  Slavery The primary goal of British expansion and colonization in North America was to acquire land and resources to produce exports to sell for profit on the growing trans-Atlantic market. Profitable production demanded significant labour resources. The elite and entrepreneurial western Europeans who settled in the North America sought labourers to cultivate cash crops, mine for precious metals, tend livestock, provide domestic service, and work in various artisanal trades. The labour sources they drew from to fill this demand included European indentured servants and convicts, free and enslaved indigenous people in the Americas, and enslaved Africans purchased through the developing trans-Atlantic slave trade. This meant that early colonial labour forces in the Americas were often a mix of Europeans, American Indians, and Africans. Access to land was an important factor in seventeenth-century colonial America. Land, English settlers believed, was the basis of liberty and economic freedom. Owning land gave men control over their own labour and, in most colonies, the right to vote. The promise of immediate access to land lured free settlers, and ‘freedom dues’ that included land persuaded potential immigrants to sign contracts as indentured servants. Land in America also became a way for the king to reward relatives and allies. Each colony was launched with a huge grant of land from the crown, either to a company or to a private individual known as a proprietor. Some such grants, if taken literally, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Land was a source of wealth and power for colonial officials and their favourites, who acquired enormous estates. However without labour land would have little value. Since European emigrants did not come to America intending to work the land of others (except in the case of indentured servants). John Smith, one of the first leaders of Jamestown said that the emigrants “preferred the prospect for gold rather than farm. They “would rather starve than work.” However the colonists slowly realized that for the colonies to survive it would have to abandon the search for gold, grow its own food, and find a marketable commodity. It would also have to attract more settlers. The spread of tobacco farming produced a dispersed society with few towns and little social unity.
The early Colonial American society was based on primarily farming, fishing, maritime activities, and a few small industries. Even as late as 1789 America was a nation of farmers. As the Europeans started settling in North America a demand for labour arose for building roads, homes, railway tracks; cultivate crops; mining, fishing, domestic work etc. The colonists tried to quell this demand for labour by adopting three broad forms of labour, chiefly – Native Americans, indentured white servants and African slaves. The role of these groups in the growth of the colonial economy has been significant. Small-scale industries that were set up by the colonists required skilled and semi-skilled workers. Depending on the availability of natural resources, the colonies established glass industries, brick and tile yards, and potters' kilns; bog ores proved suitable for making castings and hollow ware, and rock ores fed furnace and forge industries. A flourishing lumber industry supported related activities such as shipbuilding and the production of naval stores and potash. New England's white pine provided masts, yards, and spars for the Royal Navy; the white oak of the Middle Colonies supplied valuable stock for the cooperage industry, and other hard woods of that area were used in the cabinetmaker's trade; in the South, yellow pine was the principal source of tar, pitch, and turpentine. Fishing and whaling required substantial fleets and thousands of sailors. Indigenous tribe Land in North America, of course, was already occupied. And the arrival of English settlers presented the native inhabitants of eastern North America with the greatest crisis in their history. Unlike the Spanish, English colonists did not call themselves “conquerors.” They wanted land, not dominion over the existing population. They were chiefly interested in displacing the Indians and settling on their land, not intermarrying with them, organizing their labour, or making them subjects of the crown. The English exchanged goods with the native population, and Indians often travelled through colonial settlements. Fur traders on the frontiers of settlement sometimes married Indian women, partly as a way of gaining access to native societies and the kin networks essential to economic relationships. Most English settlers, however, remained obstinately separate from their Indian neighbours. European nations justified colonization, in part, with the argument that they were bringing Christianity—without which true freedom was impossible—to Native Americans. Many eastern Native Americans initially welcomed the newcomers, or at least their goods, which they appreciated for its practical advantages. Items like woven cloth, metal kettles, iron axes, fishhooks, hoes, and guns were quickly integrated into Native life. Natives also displayed a great desire for
goods like colourful glass beads and copper ornaments that could be incorporated into their religious ceremonies. As Native Americans became more and more integrated into the Atlantic economy, subtle changes took place in their way of life. European metal goods changed their farming, hunting, and cooking practices. Men devoted more time to hunting beavers for burgeoning fur trading. Older skills deteriorated as the use of European products expanded, and alcohol became increasingly common and disruptive. Natives learned to bargain effectively and to supply items that the Europeans desired. Later observers would describe this trade as one in which Indians exchanged valuable commodities like furs and animal skins for worthless European trinkets, this way the European economy profited more than it should have. The colonists tried to enslave indigenous tribes, many of them were taken as slaves after the tribes lost battles with the Europeans. However the colonists quickly discovered that the Indians, the Native Americans who had settled the continent centuries before the Europeans, would not make compliant workers confined to settled abodes. The alternatives for labour power were to be found. For a variety of reasons, Africans replaced American Indians as the main population of enslaved people in the Americas. In some cases, warfare and disease eliminated the indigenous populations completely. In other cases, such as in South Carolina, Virginia, and New England, the need for alliances with American Indian tribes, coupled with the availability of enslaved Africans at affordable prices, resulted in a shift away from American Indian slavery. Moreover, indentured labourers from Europe and Africans slaves were skilled and better equipped, than the indigenous tribes, for the various labour requirements that arose in the colonies Indentured Labour Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607. The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labour. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it. As passage fee to the Colonies was expensive for all but the wealthy, the Virginia Company developed the system of indentured servitude to attract workers. Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy. The timing of the Virginia colony was ideal. The Thirty Year's War had left Europe's economy depressed, and many skilled and unskilled labourers were without work. A new life in the New World offered a glimmer of hope. Almost one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.
European settlers who went to the colonies had to pay for their own passage fee in order to be considered free persons once they reached America. These settlers would then quickly acquire land and build a life for themselves in the new lands. In the seventeenth century, however, almost two-thirds of English settlers came to North America as indentured servants. Indentured servants were those who voluntarily surrendered their freedom for a specified time (usually five to seven years) in exchange for passage to America, room, board, lodging and freedom dues. Just like slaves, these servants could also be bought and sold, they could not marry without the permission of their owner, were subject to physical punishment, and their obligation to labour was enforced by the courts. While the life of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn't slavery. Unlike slaves, these servants could look forward to a release from bondage once they had completed the term specified in their contracts. There were laws that protected some of their rights. But their life was not an easy one, and the punishments meted out to people who wronged were harsher than those for non-servants. An indentured servant's contract could be extended as punishment for breaking a law, such as running away, or in the case of female servants, becoming pregnant. Many historians argue that they were better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country. Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year's worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the treacherous journey by sea and the harsh conditions of life in the New World, satisfaction was a modest life as a freeman in a burgeoning colonial economy. Once the indentured servants had completed their term as labourers they would receive a payment known as “freedom dues” and become free members of society. However, indentured servitude was not a guaranteed route to economic autonomy, because of the high death rate many servants did not live till the end of their terms. Freedom dues were sometimes so meagre that they did not enable recipients to acquire land and other resources. Many of these servants often found the reality of life in the New World less appealing than they had anticipated. Many employers, who employed indentured servants, constantly complained of servants running away, not working diligently or being unruly. Convinced that England was overpopulated, the British government encouraged emigration to America of the unemployed poor and vagrant class and permitted skilled workers to go to the colonies. Gradually, with England's rise to commercial and industrial primacy by the end of the seventeenth century, the official attitude changed, culminating in the enactment by Parliament in 1765 of a law forbidding the emigration of skilled workers. This was followed in turn by statutes of 1774, 1781, and 1782 forbidding the exportation of textile machinery, plans, or models. Toward the poor, the untrained, the vagrants, and the criminal class the government felt