Indentured labor replaced slavery while being chosen voluntarily in some cases

Evidence

Indentured workers were bound by strict labor contracts for a period of several years. Wages and conditions were poor, and breaches of contract were severely punished. On the other hand, work overseas offered an opportunity to escape poverty and repressive situations, such as the Indian caste system. Many workers remained as free settlers in East Africa, the Caribbean, Fiji, and elsewhere, where they could obtain land or set up businesses. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3849

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the diamond-trade chapter’s sorting of coercion, exit, and choice — here too a brutal labor regime was voluntarily entered as escape from something worse. — connects to: Servitude persists even when the servant is well-treated and chooses freely — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 188