Servitude in Modern Times

by Bush, M. L.

• ISBN13: 9780745617299
• ISBN10: 0745617298
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-02
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This book offers a comparative analysis of the major systems of servitude present in the world since 1500. Slavery, serfdom, debt bondage, indentured service and convict labour all provided labour and service through the legal subjection of one person to another, but remained very different. By comparison and contrast, this study seeks to establish their distinctive character. Servitude in Modern Times concentrates on the forms of servitude that figured in the process of early modernization: notably the white bonded labour, convict and indentured, used to settle North America; the slave systems of the Americas and the Ottoman Empire; and the serf regimes of central and eastern Europe. It also examines the servitude that survived the emancipations of the nineteenth century: the endurance of slavery and debt bondage in Africa and Asia; the extensive use of indentured service on colonial plantations; the forced labour provided by the concentration camps of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Traditional assumptions are challenged: M. L. Bush argues against the standard, neo-abolitionist view that the servile were powerless victims, proposing that, in most cases, they ingeniously succeeded in acquiring rights and liberties. He shows how servitude contributed to the modernizing process by compensating for the shortage of waged labour which was frequently encountered by early capitalism. In this respect the book challenges the progressiveness with which modernization has normally been depicted. Servitude in Modern Times will be of great interest to students and scholars in history, politics and sociology, as well as to a general public horrified by man's inhumanity to man.

Author Biography

M. L. Bush is Research Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University

Table of Contents

Preface	viii
Part I The Forms of Legal Bondage
Servitude Comparatively Considered	3	(3)
Modern Slavery	6	(13)
Modern Serfdom	19	(9)
Indentured Service	28	(11)
Debt Bondage	39	(7)
Penal Servitude	46	(11)
Part II Emergence and Development
White Servitude in the Americas	57	(12)
New World Slavery	69	(48)
Spanish America	75	(7)
Brazil	82	(8)
The Caribbean	90	(15)
North America	105	(12)
European Serfdom	117	(44)
Western Europe	122	(3)
The Polish Commonwealth	125	(9)
The Habsburg Monarchy	134	(3)
Bohemia	137	(5)
Hungary	142	(9)
The Russian Empire	151	(10)
Islamic Slavery	161	(16)
Africa and Asia	161	(3)
Military slavery	164	(4)
The Ottoman system	168	(9)
Part III Emancipation and After
Abolition in Europe and the Americas	177	(23)
The rejection of serfdom and slavery compared	177	(4)
The emancipation of the European serfs	181	(5)
The termination of New World slavery	186	(14)
The Survival of Servitude	200	(36)
Instead of slavery	200	(12)
The colonial accommodation	212	(10)
In the totalitarian state	222	(14)
Conclusion: The Significance of Modern Servitude	236	(5)
A Bibliographical Essay	241	(5)
Notes	246	(36)
Index	282