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Slavery in Virginia dates to 1619, soon after the founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The company established a headright system to encourage colonists to transport indentured servants to the colony for labor; they received a certain amount of land for people whose passage they paid to Virginia. African workers first appeared in Virginia in 1619, brought by English privateers from a Spanish slave ship they had intercepted. As the Africans were baptized Christians, they were treated as indentured servants. Some laws regarding slavery of Africans were passed in the seventeenth century and codified into Virginia's first slave code in 1705. ==Indentured servants== By 1650, there were about 300 Africans living in Virginia, about 1% of an estimated 30,000 population of people of English and European ancestry. They were not slaves but worked as indentured laborers, as did the approximately 4000 white indentured servants working out their loans for passage money to Virginia. Many had earned their freedom, and they were each granted of land when freed from their indentures, so they could raise their own tobacco or other slavery . Although they were at a disadvantage in that they had to pay to have their newly acquired land surveyed in order to patent it, white indentured servants found themselves in the same predicament. Some black indentured servants patented and bought land after gaining freedom. Anthony Johnson, who settled on the Eastern Shore following the end of indenture, later bought African slaves as laborers. George Dillard, a white indentured servant who settled in New Kent County after his servitude ended, held at least of his own land and married, despite a dearth of women in the colonies at that time.〔9Nell Marion Nugent, ''Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1666,'' with Introduction by Robert Armistead Stewart (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1963 (GPCo, ), originally published Richmond, VA: 1934), pp. 194-195, in Patent Book 2, p. 231. Hereinafter , Nugent, C&P 1:194, PB 2: 231; and a later volume by Nugent--Cavaliers and Pioneers. . . , 1666-1695, Vol. 2, (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1977): Nugent, C&P 2: 240, PB 7: 173; 2: 259, PB 3: 99; 2; 341-342, PB 8:37, 42; and 2: 386, PB 8, 320.〕 Nicholas Ferrar wrote a contemporaneous text ''Sir Thomas Smith's Misgovernment of the Virginia Company'' (first published by the Roxburghe Club in 1990). Here he alleges that Smith and his son-in-law, Robert Johnson, were running a company within a company to skim off the profits from the shareholders. He also alleged that Dr. John Woodall had bought some Polish settlers as slaves, selling them to Lord de La Warr. He claimed that Smith was trying to reduce other colonists to slavery by extending their period of indenture indefinitely beyond the seventh year.〔''Sir Thomas Smith's Misgovernment of the Virginia Company.'' By Nicholas Ferrar. A Manuscript from the Devonshire Papers at Chatsworth House. Edited with an introduction by D. R Ransome. Roxburghe Club, 1990. Unpublished. Presented to the Members by the Duke of Devonshire.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of slavery in Virginia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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