Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies.

This book examines indentured servitude in the British American colonies to explore how the institution influenced emerging concepts of citizenship. It contrasts servitude with race-based slavery, highlighting how servants were legally recognized as rights-bearing members of colonial society and could access the courts to assert these rights. The analysis focuses particularly on Virginia and Maryland, where a distinct form of citizenship developed for indentured servants, while also addressing the more limited rights of servants in the British Caribbean. Through legal cases and legislation, the work reveals how servants, including women and children, navigated and sometimes resisted servitude, contributing to evolving ideas of citizenship in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.