The Sugar Barons
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £5.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Sugar Barons for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £5.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Very impressive - a meticulously researched piece of work, and so engagingly written. It taught me so much that I didn't know about British Caribbean history. What a story!"--Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and The Long Song
"Gripping ... a compendium of greed, horrible ingenuity and wickedness, but also a fascinating and thoughtful social history"--William Dalrymple, author of White Mughals
"Matthew Parker's admirable and frequently gripping book ... charts the Caribbean islands' profound effect on both British and wider European and African history ... he has the most extraordiary material at his disposal"--Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times
"In The Sugar Barons, Parker provides a glittery history of the British impresarios, heiresses and remittance men involved in Caribbean slavery... racy, well-researched history... The Sugar Barons provides eloquent testimony to the mercantile greed of a few and manifest misery endured by millions in the pursuit of sweetness"--Ian Thomson, Guardian
"Fabulously researched, the diary entries, letters and papers reveal a staggering level of corruption and cruelty. But despite the soap opera potential of the truly scandalous tales, Parker refuses to sweeten his matter-of-fact prose style for the casual page-burner. Instead he construct, piece by piece, what amounts to a compelling prosecution of the slavery and Imperial greed that left a shocking legacy in the region"--Wanderlust
"Compelling, wonderful ... The Sugar Barons is an exemplary book; history as it should be written."--Andrea Stuart, Independent
"Able and well-researched... As Matthew Parker's engaging book demonstrates, by 1750 the sugar trade, like gas and oil today, had infiltrated so many aspects of national life that it has become a power in the land in its own right. Politicians courted it and men died in its service. It had become a national necessity."--Literary Review
"Gripping ... a compendium of greed, horrible ingenuity and wickedness, but also a fascinating and thoughtful social history"--William Dalrymple, author of White Mughals
"Matthew Parker's admirable and frequently gripping book ... charts the Caribbean islands' profound effect on both British and wider European and African history ... he has the most extraordiary material at his disposal"--Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times
"In The Sugar Barons, Parker provides a glittery history of the British impresarios, heiresses and remittance men involved in Caribbean slavery... racy, well-researched history... The Sugar Barons provides eloquent testimony to the mercantile greed of a few and manifest misery endured by millions in the pursuit of sweetness"--Ian Thomson, Guardian
"Fabulously researched, the diary entries, letters and papers reveal a staggering level of corruption and cruelty. But despite the soap opera potential of the truly scandalous tales, Parker refuses to sweeten his matter-of-fact prose style for the casual page-burner. Instead he construct, piece by piece, what amounts to a compelling prosecution of the slavery and Imperial greed that left a shocking legacy in the region"--Wanderlust
"Compelling, wonderful ... The Sugar Barons is an exemplary book; history as it should be written."--Andrea Stuart, Independent
"Able and well-researched... As Matthew Parker's engaging book demonstrates, by 1750 the sugar trade, like gas and oil today, had infiltrated so many aspects of national life that it has become a power in the land in its own right. Politicians courted it and men died in its service. It had become a national necessity."--Literary Review
Book Description
Power, money and corruption in the British Empire: the English families for whom the sugar trade brought wealth beyond their wildest dreams
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Make no mistake this book could have been a dry old tome, or equally it could have been the sort of dynastic saga once popularised by James Michener. Instead it borrows from the best of both and is both scholarly and exciting, horrific and enlightening. It is very, very readable. It doesn't shirk the issues either. Firmly placing slavery in context, the sugar trade absolutely relied on the practice, it explores the social mores of the time and how families such as the Drax, Codrington and especially the Beckfords made and frittered fortunes amassed thanks to the enforced efforts of fellow humans. The author does not look back with rose tinted glasses either and tells this intriguing tale with well reasoned condemnation but with also a certain understanding of why the colonial powers acted as they did. In the book you will meet pirates, natives, courtesans, and toffs who inhabited a world of great privilege alongside that of the slaves and factory workers who lived in a world of squalor. Although there are many harrowing passages there are also many amazing adventures along the way.
If you are interested in one of the major factors on which the "success" of the British Empire was based, and want a right rollicking yet very human story to read then this is the book for you.
If you are interested in one of the major factors on which the "success" of the British Empire was based, and want a right rollicking yet very human story to read then this is the book for you.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The subtitle for Matthew Parker's Sugar Barons is Family, Corruption, Empire and War, which provides a fair summary of this incredibly readable account of the West Indies sugar trade.
For Parker, the sugar trade - and the families who made their fortunes from it - provide the starting point for a no-holds barred account of colonialism in the region across the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular, Parker unpacks the British role in the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, much of which - to this reader at least - came as a shameful revelation. Parker details the barbaric trade right through from the horrendous sea passage from West Africa to the brutality of forced labour on the plantations, where vile punishments and abuse were routinely - and often randomly - meted out by the plantation managers.
In the account of the families - the Draxes, Beckfords and Codringtons - and individuals (notably the extraordinary diary of life on the plantations provided by Thomas Thistlewood) Parker explores, without ever excusing, some of the conditions in which an economy and society could come to be built on such inhuman cruelty: high rates of disease and mortality, which made life cheap and bred amorality, decadence and alcoholism; the vast profits to be had from the sugar trade for the few, often propped up by protectionism; the constant fear amongst the heavily out-numbered white minority of revolt by the slaves; and the realisation that immense wealth could not buy the plantation owners the respectability and acceptance they craved back in England, where they were mocked for their tasteless ostentation - and their West Indian vowels.
Throughout the book there are fascinating sub-plots and details - the breadth and depth of the author's research is astonishing - but Parker is too talented a writer ever to let the pace flag. Sugar Barons is a gripping read from start to finish and is very highly recommended.
For Parker, the sugar trade - and the families who made their fortunes from it - provide the starting point for a no-holds barred account of colonialism in the region across the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular, Parker unpacks the British role in the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, much of which - to this reader at least - came as a shameful revelation. Parker details the barbaric trade right through from the horrendous sea passage from West Africa to the brutality of forced labour on the plantations, where vile punishments and abuse were routinely - and often randomly - meted out by the plantation managers.
In the account of the families - the Draxes, Beckfords and Codringtons - and individuals (notably the extraordinary diary of life on the plantations provided by Thomas Thistlewood) Parker explores, without ever excusing, some of the conditions in which an economy and society could come to be built on such inhuman cruelty: high rates of disease and mortality, which made life cheap and bred amorality, decadence and alcoholism; the vast profits to be had from the sugar trade for the few, often propped up by protectionism; the constant fear amongst the heavily out-numbered white minority of revolt by the slaves; and the realisation that immense wealth could not buy the plantation owners the respectability and acceptance they craved back in England, where they were mocked for their tasteless ostentation - and their West Indian vowels.
Throughout the book there are fascinating sub-plots and details - the breadth and depth of the author's research is astonishing - but Parker is too talented a writer ever to let the pace flag. Sugar Barons is a gripping read from start to finish and is very highly recommended.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Shocking, fascinating and unputdownable
I really enjoyed Matthew Parker's book on the building of the Panama Canal, Hell's Gorge, so had high expectations of his new one. In fact, it is even better. At the heart of the book are a handful of family sagas - we trace families across three of four generations, as they progress from entrepreneurs and adventurers, to sugar grandees, to decadent or hapless inheritors. Along the way, there are gripping battles, pirates, smugglers and privateers, and, of course, the horrors of slavery, calmly related, but all the more powerful for that. The author is particularly good at recreating the heat and drunkenly violent atmosphere of the sugar islands, and showing how even those who came out from England with the best intentions were corrupted by the West Indian slave society they found themselves in. The book rattles along at a great pace, but is at the same time is nuanced and highly intelligent, as well as fabulously well-researched. Thoroughly recommended, even if you are not a regular reader of history.
I really enjoyed Matthew Parker's book on the building of the Panama Canal, Hell's Gorge, so had high expectations of his new one. In fact, it is even better. At the heart of the book are a handful of family sagas - we trace families across three of four generations, as they progress from entrepreneurs and adventurers, to sugar grandees, to decadent or hapless inheritors. Along the way, there are gripping battles, pirates, smugglers and privateers, and, of course, the horrors of slavery, calmly related, but all the more powerful for that. The author is particularly good at recreating the heat and drunkenly violent atmosphere of the sugar islands, and showing how even those who came out from England with the best intentions were corrupted by the West Indian slave society they found themselves in. The book rattles along at a great pace, but is at the same time is nuanced and highly intelligent, as well as fabulously well-researched. Thoroughly recommended, even if you are not a regular reader of history.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
sugar: the origins for the industrial-colonial model
Parkers history of the West Indies sugar industry is one of the most valuable reads of the year for students of industrial and imperial history. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Les Fearns
Good, nearly great
The author found a fascinating subject, and included everything from sugar refining to pirates, passing through slavery, tropical disease, wars with the French, and plantation... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Neil Black
Sugar Barons
Very informative. I had had a rather sketchy knowledge of the history of the West Indies. It helped me to understand why it is an area of the world that is still in a state of... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Christopher Barnett
Gruesome, gripping, greed
This is an excellently written and hugely well-researched book. As other reviewers have mentioned, it could have been dreadfully dry in the style of a school textbook, but instead,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Carl Mason
A Warts and All Account
I am half way through my second read of Matthew Parker's superb biography The Sugar Barons, and rate it as one of the best books I can ever remember reading. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Ms. Anne M. Biffin
The past is a foreign country?
Matthew Parker has a passion for good history. His research is thorough and his narration is utterly compelling. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Daniel Park
The Sugar Barons
The Sugar Barons
I really enjoyed Matthew Parker's "The Sugar Barons"; it is an exhaustive and compelling account of how and why the West Indies became one of the most... Read more
I really enjoyed Matthew Parker's "The Sugar Barons"; it is an exhaustive and compelling account of how and why the West Indies became one of the most... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Jane
An unexpected pleasure
I decided to buy this book despite its somewhat sensational title and the brief biographical information about the author on the jacket, neither of which encouraged me to expect... Read more
Published 10 months ago by CTA
Frank report on sugar and slavery
A history of the early days particularly of Barbados and Jamaica. Stories of British families who became immensely rich and of some who lost it all. Read more
Published 10 months ago by pscoptera
Hooked from the first page
Unusually for a history book The Sugar Barons gripped me from the first page, I normally need a chapter! Read more
Published 11 months ago by JAV
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
