Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London to America, 1618-1718: 'There is Great Want of Servants'

by John Wareing

Overview

The key role played by indentured servants in the settlement and development of the English colonies in the West Indies and the North American mainland in the first century of English colonisation has been overshadowed by interest in the much larger later trade in African slaves. 'There is Great Want of Servants' provides the first full examination of the English trade in indentured servants, which delivered the majority of an estimated 457,000 white people who migrated to the American colonies before 1720. English colonisation intended to create 'new Englands out of England' - to enlarge trade and plantation - but settlement required people to work the land. Labour had to be transported over 4,000 miles of threatening ocean in a new system of indentured servitude, in which people paid for their transportation and keep, with four years of unpaid service for adults, and more for children and adolescents. The system was not benign, neither in the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the tobacco plantations of Maryland and Virginia, nor at the centre of the trade in London and in other ports such as Bristol. Merchants, procurers, and masters of ships often used illicit methods to recruit servants as human cargo. Measures to reduce spiriting by making the offence a felony punishable by hanging, or registering servants in new offices, had little effect. The 1718 Transportation Act eased servant recruitment, but when wars in 1689-1697 and 1702-1713 disrupted the supply of servants, and demand for the addictive products of the sugar and tobacco colonies soared in Britain and Europe, white servants were increasingly substituted by African chattel slaves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191093265
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	12/06/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

John Wareing was formerly Head of the School of Geography and Environmental Studies in the University of North London. He is a well-travelled Historical Geographer with a doctorate in History and a long-standing interest in migration and indentured service to the American colonies. He has spent enjoyable periods in libraries and record offices in England, North America, and the West Indies, and his early retirement gave him the opportunity to question and revise some of the conclusions published about the early indentured servant trade from London.

Table of Contents

Part I 'The worthy action of enlarging trade and plantation'
1. 'To advance the honour of our country'
Part II Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London, 1618-1718
2. English Indentured Migration: Origins, Destinations, Substitutions
3. The Traders in the London labour market
4. The Transported and the Traded from London
Part III Controlling Criminality in the Servant Trade 1640-1718: Courts and Registries
5. Prosecution in the Courts and the Failure to Reinforce the Criminal Law, 1640-1673
6. Problems in Implementing Servant Registration, 1664-1718
7. England's first transatlantic labour trade, 1618-1718
Appendix

Editorial Reviews

"His work is a nice addition to the existing scholarship. It provides a careful exploration of the London side of the servant trade and the work that went into gathering both willing and unwilling volunteers for transport across the Atlantic." — Allison Madar, The Journal of Transport History

"This is a very important book. The major contribution of Wareing's work is that he uncovered how the servant trade operated, focusing on London. His detailed analysis of indentured servant recruitment and the structure of the servant trade in England is a much needed contribution to the field." — Abigail L. Swingen, Renaissance Quarterly

"Wareing's study wonderfully illuminates the shadowy world of the servant trade, revealing how national ambitions, demand for labor, and moral reaction to exploitation created a complex market in human capital, which servants and procurers alike hoped to manipulate for their own gain." — G. Patrick O'Brian, H-Net

"Wareing sheds new light on the trade in indentured servants and presents a story wherein 'motive, opportunity, and means often operated as a criminal trinity'. His work is a nice addition to the existing scholarship. It provides a careful exploration of the London side of the servant trade and the work that went into gathering both willing and unwilling volunteers for transport across the Atlantic." — Allison Madar, Journal of Transport History

"This study of the better-documented legal and other processes in London and Middlesex has opened the door to understanding indentured servitude and its role in the westward enterprise; and the problems of both the servants and the authorities in controlling the abuses to which the process was always vulnerable." — Peter Rushton, London Journal

"Wareing's book undoubtedly makes an important contribution to the history of early modern migration in the Atlantic world, where 'indentured servants' played a central role in the process of European colonization." — Mark Häberlein, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung

"John Wareing's fine book deserves a wide readership for its important contributions to early modern English economic history, set within a wider colonial context." — John Donoghue, Journal of Early American History

"Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London to America is a valuable study that adds appreciably to our knowledge of the history of indentured servitude in the seventeenth-century English Atlantic world ... Scholars interested in the history of servitude, migration, and empire during the Stuart era have much to gain from a careful reading of Wareing's book." — Michael Guasco, Journal of Historical Geography

"for historians and graduate students interested in early modern English population movements, servant migration to the Americas, the place of London in developing the system of servitude, and above all the shadowy world of servant procurement, there is much to recommend in Wareing's book." — Jenny Shaw, William and Mary Quarterly

"The book is at its strongest in explaining how the servant trade in England worked ... this book adds significantly to our understanding of how English merchants organized one major stream of migration to the Americas" — Jordan B. Smith, North Carolina Historical Review

"...Wareing's study wonderfully illuminates the shadowy world of the servant trade, revealing how national ambitions, demand for labor, and moral reaction to exploitation created a complex market in human capital, which servants and procurers alike hoped to manipulate for their own gain."—G. Patrick O'Brien, H-Early-America

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