Richard Frethorne, “An Indentured Servant’s Letter Home” (1623)
Write a paper in which you analyze the experience of indentured servitude in British North America. Some questions you might consider include:From these selections, how would you characterize the experience of indentured servitude in British North America?
What relationship between indentured servants and enslaved Africans do you infer from these selections?What relationship between planters and indentured servants do you infer from these selections? What are the distinctions – and parallels – between the experiences of indentured servants and the experiences enslaved Africans?
All of these documents were written by Europeans; two of these documents were written by planters. How does each author’s perspective shape their conclusions?You do not need to address all of these questions, nor should you simply summarize these six documents. Rather, invent a thesis and back it up with specific evidence from the text.Some guidelines:
The paper should be roughly 700 – 1,200 words in length (equivalent to roughly 3 – 5double-spaced pages).
Your quotations should be cited in footnotes or endnotes; avoid in-text citations.
When citing class readings, you need only provide the document’s author, thedocument’s name, and page number. (For example: Hugh Jones, “An EnglishClergyman’s View,” 6).
You may bring in other materials like secondary sources or our textbook/ lectures if youwant, although this is not necessary.