The Sugar Barons. Matthew Parker [Hardcover]

Matthew Parker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2011

The contemporary image of the West Indies as paradise islands conceals a turbulent, dramatic and shocking history. For 200 years after 1650, the West Indies witnessed one of the greatest power struggles of the age, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold. This compelling book tells how the islands became by far most valuable and important colonies in the British Empire. How Barbados, scene of the sugar revolution that made the English a nation of voracious consumers, was transformed from a backward outpost into England's richest colony, powered by the human misery of tens of thousands of enslaved Africans. How this model of coercion and exploitation was exported around the region, producing huge wealth for a few, but creating a society poisoned by war, disease, cruelty and corruption. How Jamaican opulence reached its zenith, and its subsequent calamitous decline; and the growing revulsion against slavery that led to emancipation. At the heart of "The Sugar Barons" are the human stories of the families whose fortunes rose and fell with those of the West Indian empire: the family of James Drax, the first sugar baron, who introduced sugar cultivation to Barbados, as well as extensive slavery; the Codringtons, the most powerful family in the Leeward Islands, who struggled to fashion a workable society in the Caribbean but in the end succumbed to corruption and decadence; and the Beckfords, Jamaica's leading planters, who amassed the greatest sugar fortune of all, only to see it frittered away through the most extraordinary profligacy. "The Sugar Barons" reveals how the importance of the West Indies made a crucial contribution to the loss of the North American colonies, and explores the impact of the empire on Britain, where it still constitutes perhaps the darkest episode in our history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An engaging journey to a mercifully vanished world." – The Wall Street Journal

"A tumultuous rollercoaster of a book … Mr. Parker tells an extraordinary, neglected and shameful story with gusto."—The Economist

 

"Gripping....A compendium of greed, horrible ingenuity, and wickedness, but also a fascinating and thoughtful social history." – William Dalrymple, author of The Last Mughal and Nine Lives

 

“[A] minutely detailed portrait of one corner of Britain’s constantly illuminated empire.” – Booklist

“A rich, multifaceted account of the greed and slavery bolstering the rise of England’s mercantile empire.” – Kirkus

“Successful both as a scholarly introduction to the topic and as an entertaining narrative, this is recommended for readers of any kind of history.” – Library Journal

“This is a rousing, fluently written narrative history, full of color, dash, and forceful personalities, but it's also a subtle social portrait of plantation life and governance.” – Publishers Weekly

 

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Born in Central America, Matthew Parker spent part of his childhood in the West Indies, acquiring a life-long fascination with the history of the region. Since graduating from Oxford, he has worked as an editorial consultant on a number of works of history, and written three bestselling books. He now lives with his family in east London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Hutchinson Radius (April 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0091925835
• ISBN-13: 978-0091925833
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.5 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,234,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Central America in 1970, Matthew Parker spent part of his childhood in the West Indies, acquiring a life-long fascination with the history of the region and a hopeless enthusiasm for cricket. A first-class graduate of Oxford University, he has worked as a writer, an editorial consultant, a commissioning editor, and as a contributor to history television projects. Radio appearances include the Diane Rehm show in the United States. His books include Monte Cassino, Panama Fever: The Battle to Build the Canal and, most recently, The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War in the West Indies. Matthew has written for a number of newspapers and magazines, including History Today, BBC History Magazine and the Guardian, and lectured at the Royal Geographical Society in London, the Explorers' Club in New York, Northwestern University in Chicago, and the Society of the Americas in Washington DC. His most recent television project was as historical consultant and interviewee for PBS's "Panama Canal". He currently lives in the East End of London with his family and annoying dog.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good history on a disreputable trade, August 19, 2011

By 

Mark bennett "Mark" (portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (Hardcover)

This is a well written history book. It covers the sugar trade and the families that ran it. Its far from a happy story in many respects. But its very illuminating on issues of business, trade, politics and the stories of individuals. The early parts of the book jump all over the place leading to a rather choppy narrative, but the story told is always interesting (if not exactly happy).

The sugar trade was empire in its pureist and most ruthless form. It killed most of those who became directly involved in the west indies (slave, soldier, businessmen). And the wealth all went back overseas to the ultimate owners who ran the whole thing on something like remote control. The book's ending seems rather abrupt and the author could have gone further in terms of looking at the history. But all in all a very good book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eye-opener of a book, September 22, 2011

By 

Clive Bayne - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (Hardcover)

Parker opened my eyes to the predominance of the sugar trade in the seventeenth century and beyond, the close relationship particulary between Barbados (and the English caribbean in general) with the thirteen North American colonies. He also gives another perspective on the slave trade. What I really enjoy about Mathew Parker's style is his ingenious way of getting you hooked with one or two personal stories of individuals and families; And once he has you, the process of historical extrapolation becomes much more readable. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the caribbean islands.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Used it in my US History class, February 9, 2012

By 

Dan Allosso "writer and historian" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (Hardcover)

This was a valuable addition to my undergrad Honors US History syllabus this semester. The students were not aware that English colonial success in the Atlantic really began in Barbados, or that New England and the West Indies were so important to each other's growth as early as the 1640s. A couple of things surprised me, though. First, I thought they would understand that the conflicted way we tend to look at these sugar barons (partly as self-made heroes of a rags-to-riches romance, partly as monsters who enriched themselves on slave labor) is a problem that's endemic in history. I'll need to spell it out a little more, next time. But I think Parker presented it well, especially in the self-contradictory memoirs of Richard Ligon.

The other difficulty, which I think Parker contributed to, surrounds slavery. For the most part, the students accepted Parker's claim that racialized slavery was the fault of medieval Muslims. This is unfortunate. Generally, before the modern era, slavery was not so much based on rationalizations of inferiority, as on conquest. Conquered people became slaves, often in spite of the fact that they shared the ethnicity of their conquerors. My students will see another example of the racialization of slavery when we take up Virginia next week. With so many examples from the Anglo-Atlantic world, there's no reason to go looking in 8th-century Islam.

Despite this complaint, I like the narrative style and the focus Parker throws on this time and region, which too often gets only a paragraph in textbooks. Connecting the Caribbean with the mainland (especially New England) is really helpful, and shows the early colonial period in a whole different light. This will be very useful, when we get around to discussing the way historians have fought over the "market transition" and early "capitalism" in the colonies and young nation.