xiv Prologue
Children of Jamestown.” These 17th-century newcomers to America joined
those already serving as slaves and servants to others. Chapter 2, “Indian
Bondage,” describes Indians, those who as white settlement increased in the
13 colonies, and in the wake of colonial wars (such as the Pequot War and
King Philip’s War), were forced into servitude as prisoners of war, for security
or to pay off indebtedness. The wars for empire of the 17th and 18th century,
particularly those fought between the French and English, featured raids and
counterraids by the Indians against British settlements and the experience of
captivity for English men, women, and children in New France, where they
joined French engagés, as described in Chapter 3, “The Captives of New
France.” Those seeking a new life, either the deserving or undeserving
poor—poor because of their own fault or another’s—signed contracts, or
indentures, agreeing to work in the colonies for a term of years in return for
transportation to America. Those in a particular town in colonial America,
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, are described in Chapter 4, “English Town by
the Sea.” That many early modern European countries, such as the Nether-
lands, adopted the system of using dispossessed people to further imperial-
istic goals of empire, is the topic of Chapter 5, “The Dutch Servants of New
Netherland and New York.”
Not everyone agreed or volunteered to emigrate to America. Press gangs in
England roamed city streets looking for the intoxicated wayfarer or the hap-
less orphan who could add to a ship’s complement of bodies. Spirits, so-
called, advertised the wonders of America and chances for wealth to
credulous, hungry people looking for a way out. Poverty was such in Tudor-
Stuart England that Elizabeth and her successors tried to legislate an answer,
the English Poor Laws, which largely failed, leading to desperation among
the poor. Many were like Moll Flanders depicted in Daniel Defoe’s novel or
James Revel, who put his life to verse and became a Poor Unhappy Transported
Felon who penned a sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation at
Virginia in America. In the wake of increasing poverty and crime, the English
penal law system amassed a staggering list of 160 capital crimes that could
result in execution by hanging at the gibbet. Some felons learned to claim the
“benefit of the clergy,” which resulted in the judge providing them the option
of transportation to the colonies. Such are those portrayed in Chapter 6,
“Daniel Defoe’s London.”
Impoverished Europeans (mostly German, French, Dutch), or those seek-
ing a new life because of the ravages of war, emigrated from Europe as free
people only to discover upon their arrival in America that to pay their pas-
sage they had to bind themselves as servants: these people are described in
Chapter 7, “The Voyage of the Free-Willers.” Those who arrived in America to
become subject to the master’s whims in work, food, shelter, and punish-
ment had usually brought it on themselves, or at least had made the decision
by their own free will. “Free will” was the phrase thrown in the face of the
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