‘Read J.C. Ballagh’s ‘White Servitude’ (Baltimore, 1895). An organized system of kidnapping had prevailed along the British coast; you lads were seized and sold into slavery on the American Plantations.’ -Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 28, 1919
‘Ballagh’s monograph shows conscientious labor, good judgment, and a fair degree of skill in the arrangement of the matter.’ – Virginia Magazine of History, 1895
Has full justice been done to the great class of English servants, who came to America in the colonial age, and is it due to them, more, perhaps, than to any other distinct class is due the broad foundation upon which our American civilization was laid?
As noted by James Curtis Ballagh in his 1895 book ‘White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia, ‘ in the formative period-the seventeenth century-white servants were of supreme importance, negroes not yet having been brought over in great numbers from their native country. The indentured servant of the colonial age is deserving of lasting honor as one who was ready to abandon his native soil to contend with the strange conditions beyond the sea, and with the axe in the forest and the hoe in the field, to lead the van in the first stage of that majestic march of the nation, which did not halt until the shores of the Pacific had been reached.
In introducing his book , Ballagh writes:
‘ The object of the present paper, then, is to show:
‘First, the purely colonial development of an institution which both legally and socially was distinct from the institution of slavery, which grew up independently by its side, though the two institutions mutually affected and modified each other to some degree.
‘Second, that it proved an important factor in the social and economic development of the colonies, and conferred a great benefit on England and other portions of Europe in offering a partial solution of their problem of the unemployed.’
In concluding his work, Ballagh writes:
‘In conclusion an important political effect on the American colonies should be noted. The infusion of such large numbers of the lower and middle classes into colonial society could only result in a marked increase of democratic sentiment, which, together with a spirit of rebellion against the unjust importation of convicts and slaves, increased under British tyranny the growing restlessness which finally led to the separation of the colonies from the mother country.’
About the author:
James Curtis Ballagh (1866-1944) wrote ‘White Servitude’ as a dissertation while a Ph.D. student at John Hopkins. He became an associate professor of American history at the University of Alabama in 1906.
Other books by the author include:
• The South in the Building of the Nation
• A history of slavery in Virginia
• America’s international diplomacy
Ballaugh’s ‘White Servitude’ is a well-regarded historical source, cited by the following modern works:
• A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain’s Convict Disaster
• The Many Legalities of Early America
• The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
• Servants and Servitude in Colonial America
• Labor, Job Growth and the Workplace of the Future
• Creating Black Americans: African-American History
• Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery
• Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness
• Our American Adventure: The History of a Pioneer East Texas Family
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