You know how almost everything was a capital offense in Olde Britain?

[cthulu2016]

It's true. Back in the day everything short of spitting on the sidewalk was a capital crime.

Oddly enough, however, most people sentenced to death were not executed. It was an anomalous system. The majority of death sentences for relatively minor offenses (most things short of murder) were commuted and the condemned stored in derelict ships ("the hulks&quot until they could be shipped off to a colony, never to return.

This kind of "everything is a capital offense" legal system gives the system infinite discretion in sentencing. Anything from time served to hanging was available for almost every offense, and anything short of hanging, no matter how harsh, could be cast as mercy.

Most people who ended in in Australia had been convicted of a capital offense that was commuted to "transportation." Upon arrival, the convicts would be sold or otherwise assigned as indentured servants to employers (mostly farmers lured to Australia by the promise of free labor) for a certain term. When the term ran out the convict was free, but could not leave Australia. (If he stayed where he was the farmer now had to pay him for the same work.)

Fun fact: Prostitution was never a transportable offense. Many women sent to Australia had some experience as prostitutes, but they were being transported for serious crimes—typically stealing cloth or shoes.

[Paul E Ester]

1. My favorite "being seen on the King’s highway with a sooty face"

One could be hanged for such offences as “kicking Westminster Bridge,” “being seen on the King’s highway with a sooty face” and “impersonating an Egyptian.” The modern prison system didn’t exist, and so if one was found guilty of a felony, the penalty was transportation or death. Mysteriously, though, these harsh sentences didn’t seem to affect the wealthy quite as often as the poor.

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/mack-the-knife-the-true-story/

[cthulu2016]

2. "Iimpersonating an Egyptian..." Now I know why Susanna Hoffs had to flee Britain

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Fun fact, 1/3 of the US Population by 1776, is believed to have come`

from transportation.

Another fun fact, life for the indentured servant was so harsh that most did not survive the experience, especially if sent to places like the Tobacco Fields, where they worked side by side with Black slaves.

Another fun fact. this led to Bacon's Revolt, the first mass slave revolt, exactly 100 years before the War of Independence started, and that led to the first major mobilization of troops from the mother country to the Colonies.

I know, those fun facts they don't teach in school any more. But we would not want to call transportation what it was, slavery.

[csziggy]

4. And many formerly indentured servants became slave owners later

One of my ancestors is descended from sons of a couple who died while indentured - the under age sons had to serve out the term for their deceased parents:

John Kinard petitioned on 26 Jan 1749 (1750 in modern calendar) for
bounty, for himself and his youngest brother, Martin Kinard. The petition
states that they had arrived in SC several years before and their parents had
died in the service of Mr. Henry Middleton. They both were granted 50 acre
tracts on Crims Cr.
http://dutchforkchapter.org/html/kinard_john.html

They built their fortunes on owning land and slaves.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Oh absolutely

and many of the early African slaves also became slave owners later. Why? Early on Indenture work for both, contract and all, with average number of years of service at seven.

This is what I like to call the real still open scab of US History...

The fact that we are having this conversation is unusual.

[csziggy]

6. In the Southern colonies and US, the path to wealth was slave ownership

Tobacco and cotton, the main crops, were far too labor intensive to be profitable without slaves to do the work. So it's not all that surprising that anyone who could purchase land also managed to acquire slaves to work it.

For Europeans immigrants, indenture was the way to pay for their passage. For Africans brought to this country against their will, they had no way to buy their way to freedom for the most part, especially once the North-South disparity over slave ownership became a major political issue.

I dislike it, but I am descended from a lot of slave owners. The history of my Mother's family is very much a history of Southern plantation owners and their support for and profits from slavery. Even some of the preachers in the family supported slavery and used their pulpits to preach that support.

I can't change the past, but I can try to look at it objectively and recognize the evils that my ancestors participated in.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Yup, but the fact is that we are having a conversation

that usually happens ONLY in Academia.

This has a lot to do with CURRENT attitudes about work, and the place of work in life. It also has a lot to do wiht how workers relate to business owners in the South, less so in the rest of the Country, but just less so.

The US created a caste society, and it remains a caste society in many ways. Why we love those very wealthy folks who deign to give the rest of us work. This is a dangerous attitude and also partially explains why workers rarely revolt... it is not because they love conditions, none does... but it is because those who are wealthy obviously are better. It is a very calvinist attitude by the way.

So the history of slavery is very relevant to the present. Also the early history when the first two to three generations of slaves were freed from their indentured service after it was over. There was no legal mechanism to make it permament, until it was.