Unfree labour

Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for forms of work, especially in modern or early modern history, in which adults and/or children are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence (including death), or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families. Many of these forms of work may be covered by the term forced labour, although this tends to imply forms based on violence. Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery. (Although serfdom is technically a form of unfree labour, the term "serf" is usually only used in relation to pre-modern societies, under feudal political systems.)

References

• Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race (2 vol.) New York: Verso Books.
• Vol. I Racial Oppression and Social Control, 1994.
• Vol. II The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, 1997.
• Tom Brass and Marcel Van Der Linden (eds.), Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues (International and Comparative Social History, 5). New York: Peter Lang AG, 1997.
• Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492?1800, London: Verso, 1997.
• Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776?1848. London: Verso, 1988.
• George W. Hilton, The Truck System, including a History of the British Truck Acts, 1465-1960. Cambridge, UK: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1960.