Impressment

In the 1500’s, Britain’s transition from feudalism to capitalism was, as you might have expected, very disruptive, writes Steven Johnson in Enemy of all Mankind:

“(The transition) disgorged a whole class of society – small, commons-based cottage laborers – and turned them into itinerant free agents.”

 

While these folks were now free to move around the country, they had few skills, and thus no jobs:

“Serfs once grounded in a coherent, if oppressive, feudal system found themselves flotsam on the twisting stream of early capitalism.”

 

So many jobless people with few prospects roaming around inevitably created problems wherever they passed. No wonder they soon became public enemy number one. In response, the Vagabond Act was passed – such folks could be rounded up by the authorities, and then whipped in public.

 

Around the same time, Britain was starting to become a sea-faring nation. The Royal Navy needed plenty of recruits. The “recruiters” came to be called the impress service:

“Impressment was a kind of hybrid of the modern military draft (compulsory military service) and state-sponsored kidnapping.”

These “recruiters”, aka the press-gangs, would swoop in on an unsuspecting unemployed guy and make him a Godfather style choice – either he would be whipped under the Vagabond Act; or he could “voluntarily” join the Navy. It was an offer few could refuse…