Bondage Dictionary (Part 1)

The world of slavery is very foreign to us today. For this reason, when we read classic English literature or court records, we need a dictionary to sort through the mind-set of the time. It was a very strange world! This first of three part blogs focuses on words associated with the bondage of Africans, Europeans, East Indians and Native Americans. Only selected words have been chosen for presentation. The focus of this dictionary is terms from the seventeenth century English colonies through the enslavement of African Americans in the United States. There was crossover between many colonial words in regards to both white and black slavery, as the institution was still being defined in the courts during the 1600s.

It’s important to remember how huge the trafficking in human bondage was in the New World, with the Irish being in the middle of it on both sides of the chains. All the European powers with New World colonies were involved. This dictionary will not list some of the more obvious words.

Abandonment: When a slaveholder deserts his or her slaves.

Absentee Owner: A plantation or estate owner who did not live on and manage the property directly.

Absolute Slave: A slave for life; not a term slave.

Adults: African men and women generally older than 13 or 14 years of age or taller than four feet four inches. Specific age ratios differ by time and place.

Agent: In the indentured servant trade, an agent recruited the servants and redemptioners. The agents commonly sold or assigned their rights to these servants to labor starved American colonists.

Agricultural Laborer: After men completed several years as an agricultural servant, married, and established households, they became agricultural laborers.

Agricultural Servant: Young single men who lived in rural areas were commonly contracted to serve farmers for one year periods. This time served as agricultural training and certain aspects of this practice evolved into the indentured servants industry.

Americas: North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands.

Angola: see West Central Africa

Apprentice: Individuals contracted to serve a master for a specific number of years to learn a trade usually for a low wage. Parts of this practice evolved into the indentured servant practice. Often in an indenture contract, the word apprentice signals that a child is being indentured, not necessarily that the child would be learning a trade.

Apprenticeship: The period an individual was bound under contract as an apprentice, usually until the age of 21.

Barbadosed: A seventeenth century term for white dissidents who were shipped into slavery in the Americas for political resistance. Originally used for dissidents transported to Barbados.

Bight of Benin: Slaving region defined as coving modern day eastern Ghana, Togo, Benin and western Nigeria. Europeans called it the Slave Coast.

Bight of Biafra: Slaving region defined as covering the coastline of modern day western Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and northern Gabon. The region includes Bimbia Island, Cameroon and the Gulf of Guinea islands Principe and Sao Tome.

Bocal Slaves: Newly arrived slaves who spoke languages different from the common language in the place of import. In the African context, bocals (Portuguese) or bozals (Spanish) were slaves imported from the interior to coastal trading sites. In the Americans context, bocals were slaves imported directly from Africa.

Boys: Immature male slaves. Slave traders classified African boys as shorter than four feet four inches or younger than 13-14 years of age.

Carib: The indigenous people who inhabited the Caribbean Islands and parts of the neighboring mainland.

Chattel Slavery: A form of slavery introduced by Europeans in which the slave is treated as property belonging to the owner with no rights. The children of chattel slaves were also slaves.

Children: Immature slaves, defined in the British slave trade as being shorter than four feet four inches or younger than 13-14 years.

Clearance: Primary port where slaving voyages began.

Coffle: A group of slaves chained together in a line commonly used by slavers in the eighteenth century.

Contract: Also called an indenture, the contract was where the emigrant agreed to work as a servant without pay for a fixed number of years in return for passage to the New World.

Convict Servant: Criminals in the British Isles who accepted exile were given mandatory labor from seven to fourteen years as an alternative to execution or prison. They were transported to the American colonies from 1615 to 1776 and to Australia from 1787 through 1868.

Demerara: Coastal region of modern day Guyana.

Departures: Departures refer to ports where voyages originated. Ships would clear customs “for Africa” and depart from Europe or the Americans.

Disembark(ation): To force slaves from vessels in port. Slaves could be disembarked at several ports in the Americas, as captains often traveled to various ports searching for the best price for their cargo.

Domestic Servant: A man or woman who worked for hire in a person’s home for pay. Domestic servants were different than indentured servants.

Domestic Slave: A slave who works in a household rather than in the fields.

Driver: An overseer of slaves. The driver was another slave or a European.

Duty Boy: A seventeenth century term for white child slaves, orphans, and those taken from parents and shipped into slavery in the Americas. Duty Boys were considered the living dead as their enslavement in Virginia and the West Indies was basically a death sentence.

East India Indians: A Colonial American term to mean people from the Indian subcontinent; especially in Maryland and Virginia. They arrived as indentured servants or slaves from England, and intermarried with the Free Blacks or white indentured servants.

Elderly Free Black: A free person of color sixty years of age or over.

Elderly Slaves: A slave sixty years of age and over.

Embark(ation): Loading African captives into a slave ship. Slaves were often be kept below decks for weeks after embarkation, waiting for the slaving master to procure a full cargo.

Estate: A large area of land, used for agriculture with a large main house owned by an individual or family.

Exile: An individual expelled from his or her native country by the government for opposing views.

Factors: Men who traded in their own name, possessed the goods, and usually did not reveal the names of the people for whom they were acting. Factors were the opposite of agents.

Field Slave: A slave who plants, tends and harvests crops on a plantation.

Free Black: Sometimes referred to as “free persons of color” or “free color’ these were either free slaves, African Americans who were born free or mixed-race. Sometimes referred to as Free Color or Free Person of Color.

Girls: Immature female slaves. Slave traders classified African girls as shorter than four feel four inches or younger than 13-14 years of age.

Gold Coast: Slaving region in the modern day country of Ghana.

Guinea Coast: The West African coast.

Guineaman: A common term for a slave ship. Sometimes the term “Guinea Ship” was used.

Headright: A grant of land to individuals responsible for transporting immigrants to Colonial America. The headright was usually 50 acres, and they motivated investors to transport servants to the colonies.

Hired Servant: A servant who received wages for labor and had power to select the master and time to serve. They were not always immigrants although many immigrant servants after their freedom did become hired servants.

Hispaniola: A major Caribbean Island containing both the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Homeward Passage: The voyage leg returning a vessel to its home port.

Tomorrow in Part 2, I will continue my “Bondage Dictionary” with words I consider to be important for the study of all facets of slavery.