ABSTRACT
All types of migrants, soldiers, slaves, free settlers, indentured servants, transported convicts, and state-sponsored women, took part in the collective enterprise of forming new societies in the Americas, alongside, and sometimes with, Native Americans. There were many different types of migrants to the British and French Americas, not all of them French or British. A key group of migrants, indentured servants, les engagés for the French, remained an important element of migration to many British colonies, particularly for Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania until the War for Independence, providing particular skills for the plantation and urban economies. Historians have expended great efforts over the years calculating the numbers of migrants, their characters, and destinations. Colonial societies in the Caribbean and North America were highly diverse, depending on the character of their settlers, the social relations they created among themselves, and the forms of economic production and trade that developed.
