This chapter describes the close links between labor institutions in Britain and its colonies. It shows how the Masters and Servants Acts and the Poor Laws were transformed across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, giving rise first to indentured servitude and then to slavery. Differences were important, however, not only between the Atlantic and Asian possessions, but also within each colony. The differences will be explained, as will the gap between the British solution (more coercion in the colonies than on the mainland) and the Russian way (more coercion in the core than in the periphery).