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The End of European Immigrant Servitude in the United States: An Economic Analysis of Market Collapse, 1772–1835

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Farley Grubb
Farley Grubb
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
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Abstract

Europeans stopped using servitude to finance passage to America sometime in the early nineteenth century, but exactly when and why immigrant servitude disappeared is a mystery. Hypotheses abound, but no consensus has emerged nor have scholars tested hypotheses. In this study, quantitative evidence for the final sixty years of immigrant servitude establishes when and why it disappeared. Servitude did not end because of insufficient demand, legal restrictions, or declines in passage fares. It ended because superior methods of financing migration developed. Chance historical events, however, determined the exact timing of the end.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 794 - 824
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1994

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