The English government compelled some convicts to emigrate to the colonies to labor as indentured servants. The system of banishing convicts emerged in 1597, when English magistrates were given the power to exile rogues and vagabonds. Beginning in 1718, they used this discretion to transport convicted felons to the New World. Leaders in England considered their ability to exile convicts to be a major innovation in the administration of justice, and the system operated as an intermediate option between capital punishment and lesser sanctions, such as whipping and branding.
The system benefited Great Britain most. Shipping convicts to the colonies provided one means of ridding its society of its unwanted. Convict transportation spared Britain from having to build and maintain a massive prison system. British leaders paid little attention to the servants themselves. As one authority on the topic noted, they consigned them to a merchant and assumed no further responsibility. It is estimated that 50,000 convicts were transported to the colonies during the colonial period.
Colonial leaders reacted angrily when they realized that they were expected to receive convict servants. Chesapeake area residents accused Britain of dumping its “Scum and Dregs” on colonial shores. They assumed that convicts carried communicable diseases contracted in jail. More troublesome, though, was the potential for unrest from these servants. It seemed unlikely that convict servants would work hard, and colonists assumed that their presence would corrupt the very foundation of society, setting a bad example for honest people. A few colonies took steps to prevent convicts from landing on their shores. Some Caribbean colonies set firm population ratios between white and black residents. They refused convict servants because they were “not considered among the Whites.” Jamaica passed a law to encourage white immigration and specifically excluded convicts. Transporting Britain’s felons to the colonies engendered some of the most heated antiimperial debate before the American Revolution.
The majority of the convict servants worked in the colonies with the greatest demand for cheap labor, Virginia and Maryland. Convicts arrived after the time when the labor system in the Chesapeake area had transformed from white indentured servants to black slaves. Convicts were shipped primarily to regions that were expanding economically and where planters were unable to obtain sufficient numbers of slaves. In Virginia they worked the TOBACCO and grain fields in the region north of the York River. In Maryland convicts landed in four of 14 counties, where they constituted about 7 percent of all labor. The economies of these four counties, Baltimore, Charles, Queen Anne, and Anne Arundel, relied primarily on tobacco production along with smaller quantities of grain and corn. Just before the Revolution, convicts appeared in the Virginia and Maryland backcountry. These more newly settled regions experienced intense labor shortages, and although planters preferred the labor of slaves, they purchased convicts if left with no other options. Western Maryland contained approximately 14,000 inhabitants, including fewer than 150 convict servants.
Further reading: A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
—Sharon V Salinger
Cooke, Elisha, Jr. (1678-1737) politician
Elisha Cooke, Jr., succeeded his father and namesake as
Leader of the opposition party in Massachusetts upon
The latter’s death in 1715. Cooke’s party won control of the assembly beginning in 1720, in part because he and his followers created America’s first political machine, the Boston Caucus. Thereafter, slates of caucus candidates were usually elected almost unanimously until Cooke’s death. A wealthy physician, real estate owner, and hospitable fellow who was always ready for a drink, he was easily able to stand election expenses. Cooke served as Massachusetts’s agent to England from 1723 to 1726 in an unsuccessful effort to convince the British government that Massachusetts was right in standing up to its governors. He continued to defend colonial rights and plague British governors until his death. His personal importance appears in the fact that after his death, the caucus went into eclipse as government supporters led by Thomas Hutchinson came to power. However, it came back in the 1760s, and thus Cooke is considered the forerunner of Revolutionary politicians such as Samuel Adams and James Otis.
Further reading: William Pencak, War, Politics, and Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981).
—William Pencak
World History
