The Foundation of Europe's New World

of Haiti in 1496. By 1516, some 12,000 remained. By 1555, the population was wiped out.⁵ Native Americans of other regions suffered the same fate. According to historian Gary Nash, a 1669 Virginia census indicated that "only 11 of the 28 tribes described by John Smith in 1608 and only about 2,000 of the 20,000 Indians present when the English arrived were still left in the colony."⁶ Europeans in the "New World," particularly those in North America, thus realized more abundant sources of labor were needed.

One of those sources were to come from Europe itself. Stories of commoners willing to rent themselves for a period of years in exchange for land and freedom in the "New World" abound in American history textbooks. These "indentured servants," as they have come to be known, comprised thousands of inhabitants of England seeking to better their lives in a land free from government oppression and rigid social mores. And many did "volunteer" their services in the hopes of a better life afterwards. But thousands were coaxed and seduced to make the journey, while countless more arrived in North American as unwilling participants of the new European colonization enterprise. "Coming from England but also from Germany and Ireland," historian Ronald Takaki explains, "these men and women were outcasts of society." They were the "rogues, vagabonds, whores, cheats and rabbles," "regarded as surplus inhabitants of England" and other societies.⁷ Others were convicts sentenced to terms of service in Virginia and other colonies. Destitute children were kidnapped off the streets and ordered into servitude by colonial authorities, and many new laborers in the colonies were victims of the Irish "slave trade."⁸

The servants were rarely treated well. Awaiting those who survived the hardships of the voyage across the Atlantic were the physical and psychological trauma of adjusting to the new lifestyle, and the intense and often deadly labor forced upon them by masters determined to "extract as much labor as possible during the years of contract." Many masters forbade their servants from marrying; pregnancy among female servants invariably equated less work time, and thus family life was very much denied the European slaves.⁹ They often wore iron collars around their necks and were many times beaten and tortured if work was not satisfactory. In order to travel outside their places of work a pass was required. And once work was complete, they returned to squalid living quarters not different from

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