Indentured Servitude

Anna Suranyi is professor of history at Endicott College.Anna Suranyi is professor of history at Endicott College.

"Indentured Servitude is an important contribution to the social, legal, and labour history of the British colonies. Suranyi walks her readers through the many points of the indenture process, the experience of a variety of servants, masters' treatment of different groups of servants in the colonies, servants' means of recourse against abusive masters, and life after servitude, while also directing them to the important connections between servitude and the evolving understanding of citizenship." Patrick O'Brien, Kennesaw State University

“Suranyi’s work provides us with a picture of an era of horrific cruelty preceding and overlapping with the barbarity of slavery. She does not fail to impress upon the reader the difference between servants and the enslaved. Indentured Servitude will be useful to those teaching the seventeenth century, for in depicting the lives of people the same age as our students, the history will resonate and help move them toward empathy with those who suffer exploitation, then and now.” Agricultural History

“Indentured Servitude encourages readers to grapple with important yet difficult questions on inequality and unfreedom to help illuminate changing conceptions of rights, oppression, and exclusion in a society that would later—and contradictorily—champion democratic ideals.” William and Mary Quarterly

“The text will be accessible to a broad range of audiences, as the individual stories, ranging from poignant to bizarre, breathe life into and paint a complex picture of the indenture experience.” The American Historical Review