indentured service
Labor for passage
Indentured service is a labor arrangement where a person contracts to work for a set period—typically four to seven years—in exchange for passage, housing, or other benefits.
The worker is bound to the employer until the term expires.
Colonial America relied heavily on indentured servants, who traded years of labor for transport across the Atlantic.
Unlike slavery, the arrangement was theoretically voluntary and temporary, though conditions were often brutal and the distinction could blur in practice: He arrived in Virginia as an indentured servant and earned his freedom after seven years.
- bondageInvoluntary subjugation to another
- human bondageForced servitude of people
- bound laborCoerced work under constraint
- contractEnforceable written agreement
- laborStrenuous effort; also childbirth
debt · master · colonial · colonial America · plantation · sugar plantation · apprentice · seven years · bound · obligation · passage · escape · term · years · work · toil · chains · redemption
- slaverychattel slavery, enslaved, slave, enslavement, slave traders
- feudal punishmenthanging, flogging, whipping, pillory, dungeon
- old customsarranged marriage, arranged marriages, dowry, betrothal, courtship rituals
indentured servicewage labor
Work exchanged for payment
at-will employment · self-employment · freedom · emancipation · freelance work
indentured servicefair wages
Reasonable compensation for labor
entrepreneurship · economic independence · financial freedom · profit-sharing
indentured, indenture, indentures, indenturing, indent, indents, indented, indenting, indentation