This essay will look at the use of both voluntary indentures as a means of emigration. It will give examples of how it worked and comment on some of the positive and negative aspects. It will conclude with the answer that although some, especially the elite did benefit through this the majority suffered and it had a negative effect upon the poorer and involuntary indented as well as the country of Scotland as a whole.

There were many push and pull factors for indenting through migration: social, economic, political, and religious all had varying influences throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As with its nature, the type of indenture varied but as a rule, it could be described as a legal contract between two people over a set period. This term usually lasted between one and seven years during which the indentured person would be supplied with food, clothes, lodging and possibly money in exchange for their labour. After this time depending on the type of contract the indented person had entered, they would become free from their contract and be given land, tools or m

Those who indented for Darien carried not only their own hopes and dreams but also that of Scotland. It was seen as a way for Scotland to impose itself upon the international colonial trading market. Poorly organised despite enthusiasm it created when first set up Darien proved to be a disaster for Scotland. The location was an area which was disease ridden and bordered by hostile Spanish forces and at the mercy of king William III who saw it as a threat to the power balance of Europe as well as a threat to his finances. It meant that those indented had to fight more than just the tropical climate. Brock states that emigration through indenture was a way for Scots to try to find economic prosperity through colonial exploration as well as also being an outlet for the poor and the adventurous. He goes on to state that many of these ideas died at Darien and that the eighteenth century saw migration through indenture as a more individualistic or community approach rather than being nationalistic in ideals. This is hard to argue with as after Darien Scots, especially the mercantile and social elite, recognised that England held the key to possible future prosperity and that a union of the pa

Some topics in this essay:
, Darien Scots, Charles II, William III, Scotland England, Dunbar Worcester, Oliver Cromwell, eighteenth century, seventeenth eighteenth centuries, positive negative, found themselves, seventeenth eighteenth, eighteenth centuries, involuntary indented, migration indenture, indenture means,