Slavery, Indentured Service & Colonial Resistance — Practice · Grade 7 Social Studies

Chapter: Colonial Worlds & New York

What this practice covers

By the end of Slavery, Indentured Service & Colonial Resistance you should be able to:

8 questions, written answer, each with a worked explanation.

Vocabulary used: context, primary source, interpretation, indenture, hereditary slavery.

Problem 1

Why should indenture and hereditary enslavement not be called identical?
Answer and explanation

Their legal status, duration, hereditary conditions, rights, and control differed. Harsh treatment can exist under different institutions without making those institutions the same.

Problem 2

Why does an owner’s profit record not describe workers’ freedom?
Answer and explanation

It records a financial measure from an owner’s position. Legal status, coercion, ability to leave, and people’s own evidence are needed to investigate freedom.

Problem 3

Does no recorded revolt mean people accepted slavery?
Answer and explanation

No. Survival strategies, resistance, and constraints varied, and the surviving record may omit actions. Absence of one form of resistance does not establish consent.

Problem 4

Why is later abolition not evidence of earlier absence?
Answer and explanation

Abolition changes an existing institution or legal status. Earlier records must be studied on their own dates; ending a system does not erase its prior existence or all later barriers.

Problem 5

Invented legal summaries: Worker A has a seven-year indenture; Worker B is held under a hereditary enslaved status; Worker C receives a wage under a stated employment agreement. No full enforcement records are supplied. Compare duration and control, then identify why the summaries do not describe every lived condition.
Answer and explanation

A has a stated contractual term; B faces hereditary coercion and a property status; C has a stated wage agreement. These legal categories are distinct. The summaries do not prove fair treatment or full practical freedom in every case. Enforcement, earnings control, exit rights, and personal accounts would deepen the comparison.

Identify each stated arrangement.

Distinguish a fixed term from hereditary enslavement.

Seek enforcement and people’s accounts for lived experience.

Response criteria

  • Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
  • Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
  • Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
  • Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.

Problem 6

A colonial advertisement offers a reward for an escaped enslaved person. Does it give that person’s full motive?
Answer and explanation

It documents an owner’s attempt to recover control and selected identifying claims. It does not provide the person’s complete account; examine additional evidence without adopting the advertisement’s viewpoint as neutral.

Response criteria

  • Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
  • Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
  • Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
  • Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.

Problem 7

What was the Middle Passage?
Answer and explanation

The forced Atlantic transportation of enslaved Africans; its coercion distinguishes it from voluntary migration.

Problem 8

Name two kinds of evidence useful for studying resistance.
Answer and explanation

Petitions, escape records read critically, testimony, community institutions, material traces, and other dated independent records can help establish action and limits.

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