Forced apprenticeship

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Under forced apprenticeship (literally "Zwangslehre", to English apprenticeship "teaching" ) or indentured apprenticeship (for the term see Indentur ) is understood in the English-language historiography an apprenticeship relationship in which the children of former slaves for a teacher free of charge or for little Worked remuneration, but received board and lodging from this. This form of transition between slavery and freedom was widespread, particularly in the United States and in the British colonies in the Caribbean . In many modern societies that had abolished slavery by law, apprenticeship was a state-sanctioned legal form that allowed former slave owners to continue to keep former slaves dependent.

In the United States, the institution of forced apprenticeship first spread to Maryland and Delaware . The institution of slavery lost its foundation there when the region's plantation economy began to give way to a mixed agricultural culture in the last decades of the 18th century . Though the slavery laws remained in place, slaves were released in large numbers. The principle of apprenticeship, which had always been prevalent as vocational training in the British colonies , was now used as a coercive measure in order to gain social control over the young African American people. While white children, whose parents negotiated privately with the teacher, usually had the opportunity to acquire some education and learn a trade, the situation of black children was far less favorable. In the case of poor children - especially those whose father was absent - the apprenticeship was often ordered by a court, whereby the parents' wishes were usually not taken into account. These children hardly learned a trade, but were at best “trained” as domestic helpers.

A similar situation arose in the southern states after the end of the Civil War . In North Carolina, for example, all African-American children who were born out of wedlock could be forced to apprenticeship , which, according to the planters, applied to practically all black children.

In many cases, not only did the children concerned become dependent, but also their relatives who did not want to leave their children and who therefore entered into their own employment relationships with their teachers, which were usually extremely unfavorable for them.

The forced apprenticeship was finally abolished with the Child Welfare Act (1919).

literature

All literature titles given are in English:

  • John Anderson: Between Slavery and Freedom. Special Magistrate John Anderson's Journal of St. Vincent During the Apprenticeship , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, ISBN 0812235967
  • Frederick Cooper, Rebecca J. Scott: Beyond Slavery. Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies , The University of North Carolina Press, 2000, ISBN 0807848549
  • David Eltis: Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade , Oxford University Press, 1987, ISBN 0195041356
  • Thomas N. Tyson, David Oldroyd, Richard K. Fleischman: Accounting, coercion and social control during apprenticeship. Converting slave workers to wage workers in the British West Indies, c. 1834-1838 , in: Accounting Historians Journal , December 1, 2005, vol. 32, issue 2, pp. 201 ff.
  • Karin L. Zipf: Labor Of Innocents: Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715-1919 , Louisiana State University Press, 2005, ISBN 0807130451

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Labor of Innocents. Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715-1919 - BNET ( Memento from July 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ Labor of Innocents. Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715-1919 - BNET ( Memento from July 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ); Labor of Innocents. Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715-1919 - EH.Net ( Memento from May 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Ira Berlin : Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves , Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2
  4. ^ Labor of Innocents. Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715-1919 - EH.Net ( Memento from May 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )