Editing Redemptioner (section)

==History==
Up until the [[American Revolutionary War]], some convicts from the [[United Kingdom]] were [[Penal transportation|transported]] to the [[Thirteen Colonies|American Colonies]] and served out their time as indentured servants before receiving an official [[pardon]]. Labor was in demand in Colonial America, and so free persons were also recruited. Those who could not afford to pay their own way came under [[indenture]]s which obligated them to work for no wages, until their land and sea transportation and other expenses had been covered. Because of [[abuse of the system]], which included lying to recruits and even [[shanghaiing]] them, the [[British Parliament]] enacted laws protecting British subjects from the worst abuses. The law required that the specific terms and conditions of servitude be approved by a [[Magistrate (England and Wales)|magistrate in Great Britain]], and that any indentures not bearing a magistrate's seal were unenforceable in the colonies. This resulted in British indentured servants becoming less attractive to potential colonial masters.<ref>{{citation | last=Conlin | first=Joseph R. | year=2009 | title=The American Past: A Survey of American History | edition=9 | publisher=Cengage Learning | isbn=978-0-495-57287-9 | page=83 }}</ref> A similar law was passed in Ireland, in an act of Parliament, whereby, in return for passage to America, the servant gave the purchaser of his indenture all rights to his labour for an agreed period of time, usually four years. Once a candidate for indentured servitude was identified, the emigration agent or visiting ship captain negotiated a binding contract detailing the terms and benefits, and the contract was presented before a local magistrate.<ref>{{citation | last=Truxes | first=Thomas M. | year=2004 | title=Irish-American Trade, 1660-1783 | publisher=Cambridge University Press | isbn=978-0-521-52616-6 | page=129 }}</ref>

Non-British immigrants had no such protections. If they used the redemptioner system, they were forced to negotiate their indentures with their future master at the worst possible time, before they were allowed to leave a stinking, vermin-infested ship, at the end of a long voyage.

A few early 18th-century German-speaking colonists later sent for family members, back in the old world, by agreeing with the shipping companies to "[[wikt:redeem|redeem]]" their loved ones off the arriving vessel by paying the passage—more or less a form of [[Cash on delivery|COD]] for human cargo. Ships' owners soon saw this as a lucrative opportunity. They recruited Europeans to [[Emigration|emigrate]] without payment up front, and allowed anyone in the American Colonies to redeem the travelers. The fare was set by the shipping company and the prospective master bargained directly with the immigrant to determine how many years he or she would work to pay off the "[[loan]]" of the fare.

To fill empty holds, poor Europeans were recruited onto ships in [[Rotterdam]] by “Neulaenders” (aka Neulander), or “newlanders,” who were already living in America, but had returned to Europe to pick up some possessions, or family members, to take back to America. Neulaenders received a commission for each person they brought to the ships at the harbor, including the ship that they were going to return to America on. Therefore, they were not always a trustworthy source of information about how the program would work for the emigrant. The Neulaenders were dressed in fancy clothes, in order to impress the peasants, as they wandered about Germanic countries doing their recruiting.

The vast majority of these poor, go-now-pay-later travelers were not redeemed by family members, in America, and so the term is misleading in that most of them paid for their emigration with their own toil, tears, and sometimes their life, as a redemptioner. In America, their labour was considered a good to be lawfully bought and sold until their indentures matured. The main differences between redemptioners and African slaves, were that redemptioners came of their own accord (even if misinformed) and that they had some legal rights and an “out-of-indenture” date to look forward to. An example of how the indentured servant was viewed is the 1662 [[Virginia]] law that forced both slave and indentured servant females, who bore children by their masters, to serve even more time, after their indentures had ended, for an additional two years, for the local [[churchwarden]]s. {{Citation needed|date=March 2022}} No penalty was specified for their masters for what they had done to them. On the other hand, a Virginia law of the same year stipulated that "any servant giving notice to their masters (having just cause of complaint against them) for harsh and bad usage, or else for want of diet or convenient necessaries... [shall] have remedy for his grievances."

Abuse of redemptioners on board the ships is well documented. If a person died, after half-way across the Atlantic, the surviving family members had to pay for the deceased's fare. The redemptioner's baggage was often pilfered by the crew as well. Furthermore, many travelers started their journey with sufficient funds to pay their way, but were overcharged, so that they arrived with a debt to settle, and therefore, they had to be redeemed. If the ship needed to sail back to Europe, before all of the passengers’ indentures had been sold, an agent in the American port kept them confined, until a buyer presented himself.

The redemptioners who became indentured servants ended up working as farm laborers, household help, in workshops, and even as store clerks. They were typically prevented from marrying until after their term of service ended. Often, the terms of separation stipulated that the servant receive a suit of clothing and sometimes, a shovel or an axe. Also, some contracts required the master to teach the servant to read and write from the [[Bible]]. Conditions were sometimes harsh, as evidenced by the lists and paid announcements for the return of escaped servants in the newspapers.

The [[Rotterdam]] ships always stopped first in the U.K. (often at [[Cowes]]) to clear British customs, before proceeding to the Colonies. A list of indenture registrations in [[Philadelphia]] from 1772 to 1773 survives, and it reveals that most redemptioners worked for five to seven years, to pay their masters off. (The Bible allowed no more than seven years term of any contract,<ref>[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+15%3A12-18&version=NIV] BibleGateway Deuteronomy 15:12-18</ref> and this influenced both the law and public opinion.)