then, the economic situation in the colonies led to a system whereby the colonial planter invested a
large sum to obtain a contract which in turn was assignable. This servant thus became a species of
property, an item of commerce.

Indentured servitude was an arrangement that furthered the interest of the servant in obtaining
transportation to a new land with greater opportunities as well as the master's interest in obtaining
labor. Although it was a product of consent, it accentuated the tendency to consider labor as a
commodity and was thus an element in the colonial acceptance of the propriety of purchasing slaves.

Another important factor in the willingness of Maryland colonists to purchase slaves was
racial prejudice. As Winthrop Jordan has shown in his classic study of English attitudes toward
blacks, White Over Blacks, racial prejudice arose during the initial contacts between the English and
the African, long before slavery came to the new world. "From the first, Englishmen tended to set
Negroes over against themselves, to stress what they conceived to be radically contrasting qualities
of color, religion and style of life, as well as animality and a peculiarly potent sexuality."68 Thus,
while there might have been reluctance to purchase Europeans as slaves,69 there was no such
reluctance to believe that Africans were outside the standards applied to English subjects.
Englishmen may have recognized that enslavement of persons like themselves was wrongful. If
Dutch or Spanish or Portuguese law permitted the enslavement of european Christians, the English
might consider it a mark of the inferior national moral sense of those nations, which should be
disregarded by Englishmen in their own treatment of white Christians of similar backgrounds. On
the other hand, if slavery was permissible in Africa, it could be accepted in America as well for such
alien beings. It took more than a century before Maryland colonists began to engage in debate over
the moral evil of participating in the trade.

Lifetime servitude as an element of slavery posed different questions than those posed by the
purchase of captives. English law did not directly recognize the propriety of lifetime servitude.70
There were historic analogies to serfs in the feudal system, but by the seventeenth century the
perceived surplus of labor in England made perpetual service of little use. It made more sense there
to employ free labor with short indentures.71 Conditions in the colonies where labor had to be
imported created economic pressures for longer terms of service. Colonists would not pay the
transportation cost of an English servant without receiving assurances of a period of service
sufficient to repay the investment and make a profit. The cost of an African servant was even higher
because the seller's expenses were greater and the demand for Africans in other labor markets (Latin
America and the West Indies) was greater. The seller had to obtain trading goods in one place to
take to Africa to exchange for slaves. Thus although Africans were crowded more closely together
on ships than English servants, this saving did not compensate for the additional expenses of their
purchase price in Africa and the longer distances of travel with corresponding requirements for pay
and rations for the crew over the extended period of time. The colonial buyer had to pay high prices
generated not only by the costs involved, but also by the competition from purchasers in the West
Indies and Latin America where working conditions were so bad that indentured servants would not
come. The colonist purchasing an African needed a longer period of service from the African than
from an English servant to recover his investment. The desire for profit tempted the master to hold

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