Question

How do you explain the evolution of indentured servitude to hereditary slavery?

Answer 1

Ok um to simply put it indentured servitude the slaves would sign a contract in order to be in america. Hereditary slaves had no choice in the matter and was born a slave.

Answer 2

so the servitude where the white

Answer 3

no, indentured servitude were the slaves, the white were called the masters.

Answer 4

o o ok

Answer 5

yeeah, did i help clear it up at all?

Answer 6

Ihad another ? ...yes U actually did and l just needed a shorter version on it lol

Answer 7

umm ok whats your other question?

Answer 8

You don't. There is no connection between the two, and both institutions took place in parallel. They evolved from very different practices and situations.

Indentured servitude evolved out of the general practice of apprenticeship, and was initially designed as a way for families to ensure the training of young sons in a lucrative career: the family would agree to provide a young son for apprenticeship to a master craftsmen. But since he would not be useful to the craftsmen during his training, and after his training could easily leave and be a competitor, the only way a craftsmen could be induced to take the young man on would be if he was REQUIRED to work for the master for some period of time after completing his training, thus "paying back" his "student loans," just the way some actual student loans these days require a period of public service to pay back the taxpayers' investment. Since as a rule you needed to begin apprenticeship at a young age, before you could seriously make decisions yourself, it was a decision a young man might well need to be held to by force, since as he grew older he might well not like it. No doubt this was a minority of cases, but still important.

From here identured servitude became a way to generally pledge your future services for some present investment: training, support for emigration, et cetera. Some tiimes you would sign your indentures yourself, sometime it would be your family before you were legally able to make contracts. The only real similarity with slavery is that indentures eventually could be bought and solid, so that you might end up with a different master than you thought.

Slavery is wholly different. It was a traditional component of the "booty" of piracy or warfare -- what you did with captured prisoners. You would use them as slave labor. It was commonplace in ancient Greek and Rome, among the Mongols and Chinese, among native Americans, et cetera. The key distinction is that indentured servitude is a condition sought by the servant (or his family), as a way to "purchase" something he cannot otherwise afford. Slavery, on the other hand, is a condition imposed on the servant by virtue of his having lost a war. There is no idea that it would profit the slave, ever.

Or to put it another way: indentured servitude is the sale of liberty, while slavery is the theft of liberty. To be still more graphic, indentured servitude is prostitution, while slavery is rape.

The two institutions evolved side by side, and indentured servitude was tolerated considerably more broadly than slavery, e.g. in the northern US states. Both did end roughly at the same time, but for different reasons: indentured servitude largely because evolving standards of family life made it less acceptable for parents to make career decisions for sons (just as they stopped making marriage decisions for daughters), and because industrialization made apprenticeship less important as a career path. Slavery ended generally as a result of moral repugnance.