<P> Indentured servitude in the Americas was a means by which immigrants, typically young Europeans under 25, came to the Americas from the early 17th to the early 20th centuries . Immigrants would contract to work for an American employer for a time period, usually between one and seven years, in exchange for the employer paying for their passage to the Americas . The employer provided subsistence for his indentured servants, but no wages; he could restrict some of their activities such as marriage, could sell or transfer their contract to another employer, and could seek legal sanctions, such as prison, if they ran away . At the end of the agreed time period, the servant would become free to go his own way or demand wages for his work . In some cases, the newly freed person also received an item of value such as a small parcel of land or a new suit of clothes . </P> <P> The consensus view among economic historians and economists is that indentured servitude became popular in the Thirteen Colonies in the seventeenth century because of a large demand for labor there, coupled with labor surpluses in Europe and high costs of transatlantic transportation beyond the means of European workers . Between the 1630s and the American Revolution, one - half to two - thirds of white immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies arrived under indentures . Half a million Europeans, mostly young men, also went to the Caribbean under indenture to work on plantations . Most indentures were voluntary, although some people were tricked or coerced into them . A debt peonage system similar to indenture was also used in southern New England and Long Island to control and assimilate Native Americans from the 1600s through the American Revolution . </P>

Indentured servitude in the british colonies of north america was primarily a
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