What accounted for the rapid increase in the colonial population in the seventeenth century?
Why did African slavery expand so rapidly in the late seventeenth century? 3. How did religion shape and influence colonial society?
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THE COLONIAL POPULATION
After uncertain beginnings, the non-Indian population of English North America grew rapidly and substantially, through continued immigration, slave importation, and natural increase. By the late seventeenth century, Europeans and Africans outnumbered the Indians along the Atlantic Coast.
A few of the early settlers were members of the English upper classes, but most were English laborers. Some came independently, such as the religious dissenters in early New England. But in the Chesapeake, at least three-fourths of the immigrants in the seven- teenth century arrived as indentured servants.
Indentured Servitude The system of temporary (or “indentured”) servitude developed out of practices in England. Most were young men who bound themselves to masters for fixed terms of ser- vitude (usually four to five years) in exchange for passage to America, food, and shelter. Their passage to America was a terrible trial of want and hunger. (See “Consider the Source: Gottlieb Mittelberger, the Passage of Indentured Servants.”) Male indentured ser- vants were supposed to receive clothing, tools, and occasionally land upon completion of their service. In reality, however, many left service with nothing. Most women indentures— who constituted roughly one-fourth of the total in the Chesapeake—worked as domestic servants and were expected to marry when their terms of servitude expired.
By the late seventeenth century, the indentured servant population had become one of the largest elements of the colonial population and was creating serious social problems. Some former indentures managed to establish themselves successfully as farm- ers, tradespeople, or artisans, and some of the women married propertied men. Others found themselves without land, without