Indentured servitude in the context of "Apprenticeship"

Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed during late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.

Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually, though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land. Actual slaves, such as the kholops in Russia, could, by contrast, be traded like regular slaves, abused with no rights over their own bodies, could not leave the land they were bound to, and marry only with their lord's permission.

Throughout U.S. history, the country experienced successive waves of immigration, particularly from Europe and later on from Asia and from Latin America. Colonial-era immigrants often repaid the cost of transoceanic transportation by becoming indentured servants where the employer paid the ship's captain. In the late 19th century, immigration from China and Japan was restricted. In the 1920s, restrictive immigration quotas were imposed but political refugees had special status. Numerical restrictions ended in 1965. In recent years, the largest numbers of immigrants to the United States have come from Asia and Central America (see Central American crisis).

Attitudes towards new immigrants have fluctuated from favorable to hostile since the 1790s. Recent debates have focused on the southern border (see Illegal immigration to the United States and Mexico–United States border wall) and the status of "dreamers", people who illegally migrated with their families when they were children and have lived in the U.S. for almost their entire lives (see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18, 1865. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, effective on January 1, 1863, declared that the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas (and thus almost all slaves) were free. When they escaped to Union lines or federal forces (including now-former slaves) advanced south, emancipation occurred without any compensation to the former owners. Texas was the last Confederate slave state, where enforcement of the proclamation was declared on June 19, 1865. In the slave-owning areas controlled by Union forces on January 1, 1863, state action was used to abolish slavery. The exceptions were Kentucky and Delaware, where chattel slavery and indentured servitude were finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. Situated slightly north of the equator, over 90% of its territory is covered by rainforest, the highest proportion of forest cover in the world. Suriname is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, and Brazil to the south. It is the smallest country in South America by both population and territory, with around 612,985 inhabitants in 2021 in an area of approximately 163,820 square kilometers (63,251 square miles). The capital and largest city is Paramaribo, which is home to roughly half the population.

Suriname was inhabited as early as the fourth millennium BC by various indigenous peoples, including the Arawaks, Caribs, and Wayana. Europeans arrived and contested the area in the 16th century, with the Dutch controlling much of the country's current territory by the late 17th century. Under Dutch rule, Suriname was a lucrative plantation colony focused mostly on sugar; its economy was driven by African slave labour until the abolition of slavery in 1863. Approximately 300,000 enslaved Africans were taken to Suriname during the transatlantic slave trade, from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s. After 1863, indentured servants were recruited mostly from British India and the Dutch East Indies. In 1954, Suriname became a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. On 25 November 1975, it became independent following negotiations with the Dutch government. Suriname continues to maintain close diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties with the Netherlands.

Equality before the law, known as equality under the law, equality in the eyes of the law, legal equality, or legal egalitarianism, is the principle that all people must be equally protected by the law. The principle requires a systematic rule of law that observes due process to provide equal justice, and requires equal protection ensuring that no individual nor group of individuals be privileged over others by the law. Also called the principle of isonomy, it arises from various philosophical questions concerning equality, fairness and justice. Equality before the law is one of the basic principles of some definitions of liberalism. The principle of equality before the law is incompatible with and does not exist within systems incorporating legal slavery, servitude, colonialism, or monarchy.

Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law". Thus, it states that everyone must be treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender, color, ethnicity, religion, disability, or other characteristics, without privilege, discrimination or bias. The general guarantee of equality is provided by most of the world's national constitutions, but specific implementations of this guarantee vary. For example, while many constitutions guarantee equality regardless of race, only a few mention the right to equality regardless of nationality.

Legal status describes the legal rights, duties and obligations of a person or entity, or a subset of those rights and obligations. The term may be used to describe a person's legal condition with respect to personal rights, but excluding proprietary relations, such as their having the status of a spouse. It may also refer to legal capacity apart from other elements of personal status, such as the status of a minor, or the set of privileges, obligations, powers or restrictions that a person or entity receives through legislation.

The term may also refer to a person's legal condition as imposed by law but without consent, such as the status of an indentured servant when indentured servitude is enforced by law.

Slave raiding is a military raid for the purpose of capturing people and bringing them from the raid area to serve as slaves. Once seen as a normal part of warfare, it is nowadays widely considered a war crime. Slave raiding has occurred since antiquity. Some of the earliest surviving written records of slave raiding come from Sumer (in present-day Iraq). Kidnapping and prisoners of war were the most common sources of African slaves, although indentured servitude or punishment also resulted in slavery.

The many alternative methods of obtaining human beings to work in indentured or other involuntary conditions, as well as technological and cultural changes, have made slave raiding rarer.

The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the James River, about 2.5 mi (4 km) southwest of present-day Williamsburg. It was established by the London Company as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607 O.S. (May 14, 1607 N.S.), and considered permanent, after a brief abandonment in 1610. It followed failed attempts, including the Roanoke Colony, established in 1585. Despite the dispatch of more supplies, only 60 of the original 214 settlers survived the 1609–1610 Starving Time. In mid-1610, the survivors abandoned Jamestown, though they returned after meeting a resupply convoy in the James River.

Jamestown served as the colonial capital from 1616 until 1699. In August 1619, the first recorded slaves from Africa to British North America arrived at present-day Old Point Comfort, near the Jamestown colony, on a British privateer ship flying a Dutch flag. The approximately 20 Africans from present-day Angola had been removed by the British crew from a Portuguese slave ship. They most likely worked in the tobacco fields, under a system of race-based indentured servitude. The modern conception of slavery in the British colonies was formalized in 1640, and fully entrenched in Virginia by 1660.