Colonial ‘free labor’ ideology redefined bonded servitude as a voluntary contract.

Evidence

”Free labor,” based in colonial assumptions about freedom and the necessity of work, and the paired category of ”bonded labor,” which tied work to contractual service, were important terms in conceptualizing the indentured workforce. The idea of freedom to work was constructed in opposition to the outlawed practice of forced enslavement and presupposed the free will of the individual to enter into a work arrangement that o√ered a wage. The responsibility was thus placed on workers to enter into bonded agreements; the bond or contract, in turn, transformed indentured labor into a mutually agreed arrangement in which remuneration that usually included wages, housing, transport, food, and other necessary goods were promised in exchange for the timely completion of mandated work. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 473

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘free labor’ and ‘bonded labor’ were paired, mutually constitutive categories in colonial thought.
• STORYSTEM: A narrative built around a worker who ‘freely’ signs a bond that determines their entire life, dramatizing the fiction of consent in contract labor.
• XREF: Relates to the law merchant material — contracts as instruments that move moral responsibility onto signing parties. — connects to: Economic change converts marriage from servitude into reciprocal free contract — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1093