Question

Was the practice of indentured servants the cause of Bacon's rebellion, the time line of what came first doesn't make sense to me.

Answer 1

Essentially, people who were indentured servants had to work for seven years and once they did they were free. But what do they do after that? The go-to path to wealth at the time was farming, and to do that you have to own arable land. However, that land was getting taken up in the colonies, so as the indentured servants started getting free, they had no land in the colonies and take and farm, which they didn’t like because the came for economic opportunities and they didn’t have that. This was why they wanted to push the Natives out for they’re land. The governor, Berkeley, however, wasn’t a fan of the conflicts and wanted peaceful relationships, so he banned the conflicts. The colonist thought he was just self-interested and was only helping people that were already rich by doing that, which he was, because the rich had the land and the freed indentured servants didn’t. So they rebelled.