More stormfront type thinking here. A person entering a contract to work, with release at the end, in exchange for passage isn’t slavery.
The Irish weren’t slaves.
If they went voluntarily, you might be right. Many were involuntarily transported. And the "indenture" system did not give their masters any incentive to keep them alive to reach the end of their indenture:
They were promised land after a period of servitude, but most worked unpaid for up to15 years with few ever owning any land. Mortality rates were high. Of the 1,200 who arrived in 1619, more than two thirds perished in the first year from disease, working to death, or Indian raid killings. In Maryland, out of 5,000 indentured servants who entered the colony between 1670 and 1680, 1,250 died in bondage, 1,300 gained their right to freedom, and only 241 ever became landowners.
Except for those sold by Cromwell as slaves. After the Battle of the Boyne, I believe, Cromwell sold 50,000 Irishmen as slaves. The only whites ever shipped as slaves to Caribbean.
So criminals doing 10 years in prison are not criminals because their prison sentence has an expiration date ?
The Irish had no standing under the King's Law.
Also, if one is forced to put an X on a piece of paper under threat of death it is, nowadays anyhow, not a valid contract.
Many of those sent were orphans whose parents had been killed by the English and were shipped without consent.
If the owner doesn't release the indentured or they die before their term is up what is the difference.
Read the article...many were taken without their consent to be indentured slaves. Have you read, “Kidnapped”, by Robert Louis Stevenson? This whole story is based on a young Laird who is usurped by his uncle and sold as an indentured servant in the Carolinas.