The engagé (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ɡaʒe] ^ⓘ) system of indentured servitude existed in New France, the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the French West Indies from the 18th and 19th centuries.

From the 18th century, an engagé (French: [ɑ̃ɡaʒe]; also spelled engagee) was a French-Canadian man employed to canoe in the fur trade as an indentured servant. He was expected to handle all transportation aspects of frontier river and lake travel: maintenance, loading and unloading, propelling, steering, portaging, camp set-up, navigation, interaction with Indigenous people, etc. The term was also applied to the men who staffed the pirogues on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Their role can be contrasted with the free, licensed voyageurs, the independent merchant coureurs des bois, as well as seafaring sailors. Engagé were people who were brought to New France by France to work there.

By the 19th century the term came to refer to employees of the Hudson's Bay Company of any nationality.

As the social systems of Saint-Domingue began eroding after the 1760s, the plantation economy of Saint-Domingue also began weakening. The price of slaves doubled between 1750 and 1780; St. Dominican land tripled in price during the same period. Sugar prices still increased, but at a much lower rate than before. The profitability of other crops like coffee collapsed in 1770, causing many planters to go into debt. The planters of Saint Domingue were eclipsed in their profits by enterprising businessmen; they no longer had a guarantee on their plantation investment, and the slave-trading economy came under increased scrutiny.

Along with the establishment of a French abolitionist movement, the Société des amis des Noirs, French economists demonstrated that paid labor or indentured servitude were much more cost-effective than slave labor. In principle the widespread implementation of indentured servitude on plantations could have produced the same output as slave labor. However, the Bourbon King Louis XVI didn't want to change the labor system in his colonies, as slave labor was directly responsible for allowing France to surpass Britain in trade.

Slaves, however, became expensive, each one costing around 300 Spanish dollars (some 7,333 grams (258.7 oz) of silver, valued at roughly US$5,900 with the mid-2023 price of silver – ignoring seignorage). To counteract expensive slave labor, white indentured servants were imported. White indentured servants usually worked for five to seven years and their masters provided them housing, food, and clothing. Saint-Domingue gradually increased its reliance on indentured servants (known as petits blanchets or engagés) and by 1789 about 6 percent of all white St. Dominicans were employed as labor on plantations along with slaves.

Many of the indentured servants in Saint-Domingue were German settlers or Acadian refugees deported by the British from old Acadia during the French and Indian War. Hundreds of Acadian refugees perished while forceably building a jungle military base for the French government in Saint-Domingue.^{[failed verification]}

Despite signs of economic decline, Saint-Domingue continued to produce more sugar than all of the British Caribbean islands combined.