Indentured Servitude in Colonial America

European migrants often signed contracts binding them to colonial employers for a fixed term. Courts enforced these agreements, and servants could be sold with the remaining years of their labour.

Indenture differed legally from hereditary racial slavery, but servants still faced violence, extended terms and restricted movement. Colonial labour systems frequently placed free, indentured and enslaved workers in the same economy.

A Place Called Freedom carries its protagonists from British industrial coercion into the labour hierarchy of colonial Virginia.