Author: Andrea Stuart
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030796115X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart’s earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story—from the seventeenth century through the present—as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade—“white gold,” as it was known—had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family’s experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family—its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin—she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived, and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between black and white, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.
Author: Alan H. Adamson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780598211378
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
Author: Richard S. Dunn
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807899828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
First published by UNC Press in 1972, Sugar and Slaves presents a vivid portrait of English life in the Caribbean more than three centuries ago. Using a host of contemporary primary sources, Richard Dunn traces the development of plantation slave society in the region. He examines sugar production techniques, the vicious character of the slave trade, the problems of adapting English ways to the tropics, and the appalling mortality rates for both blacks and whites that made these colonies the richest, but in human terms the least successful, in English America. "A masterly analysis of the Caribbean plantation slave society, its lifestyles, ethnic relations, afflictions, and peculiarities.--Journal of Modern History "A remarkable account of the rise of the planter class in the West Indies. . . . Dunn's [work] is rich social history, based on factual data brought to life by his use of contemporary narrative accounts.--New York Review of Books "A study of major importance. . . . Dunn not only provides the most solid and precise account ever written of the social development of the British West Indies down to 1713, he also challenges some traditional historical cliches.--American Historical Review
Author: Eric Williams
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469619490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.
Author: Francisco Antonio Scarano
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780608099255
Category : Haciendas
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
Author: Richard B. Sheridan
Publisher: Canoe Press (IL)
ISBN: 9789768125132
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 572
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Book Description
This book covers the changing preference of growing sugar rather than tobacco which had been the leading crop in the trans-Atlantic colonies. The Sugar Islands were Antigua, Barbados, St. Christopher, Dominica, and Cuba through Trinidad. Jamaica has been by far the major producer of sugar, but The Lesser Antilles had the advantage of a shorter sea trip to deliver produce and rum to the European Markets during the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 852
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 650
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Book Description
Author: Hezekiah Niles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 650
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 446
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Book Description
Containing political, historical, geographical, scientifical, statistical, economical, and biographical documents, essays and facts: together with notices of the arts and manu factures, and a record of the events of the times.
