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To those who travel there today, the West Indies are unspoiled paradise islands. Yet that image conceals a turbulent and shocking history. For some two hundred years after 1650, the West Indies were the strategic center of the Western world's greatest power struggles as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar-a commodity so lucrative it became known as "white gold." Matthew Parker vividly chronicles how the wealth of her island colonies became the foundation and focus of England's commercial and imperial greatness, underpinning the British economy and ultimately fueling the Industrial Revolution. Yet with the incredible wealth came untold misery: the horror endured by slaves, on whose backs the sugar empire was brutally built; the rampant disease that claimed the lives of one-third of all whites within three years of arrival in the Caribbean; the cruelty, corruption, and decadence of the plantation culture. Broad in scope, rich in detail, The Sugar Barons freshly links the histories of Europe, the West Indies, and North America and reveals the full impact of the sugar revolution, the resonance of which is still felt today.
- Sales Rank: #606184 in Books
- Brand: Parker, Matthew
- Published on: 2012-11-13
- Released on: 2012-11-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.21" w x 5.56" l, .97 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 464 pages
Review
"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"
"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"
About the Author
Matthew Parker was born in Central America and spent part of his childhood in the West Indies, acquiring a lifelong fascination with the history of the region. He is the author of Panama Fever, the story of the building of the Panama Canal, and Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II. He lives in London. Visit his website at www.matthewparker.co.uk.
Most helpful customer reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
good history on a disreputable trade
By Mark bennett
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.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Used it in my US History class
By Dan Allosso
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.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
An eye-opener of a book
By Clive Bayne
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.
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