The Sugar Barons [Paperback]

In the early 1600s the West Indies was a place of extraordinary danger and opportunity. Parker's often gripping history charts the growth of this venal, violent society over 200 years and the effects of the islands on British, European and African history. --Sunday Times

From the mid-17th century British countrymen and women sailed to the West Indies in search of fortunes from the lucrative sugar trade. In this perceptive account of the 200 years that entrepreneurs profited from the small islands a story of corruption, moral abandonment and excessiveness emerges.
--Express

"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 "--Wanderlust

Power, money and corruption in the British Empire: the English families for whom the sugar trade brought wealth beyond their wildest dreams

The familiar image of the West Indies as paradise islands conceals a turbulent past. For 200 years after 1650 they were the most fought over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold.

Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors of life in Britain created immense dynastic wealth but produced a society poisoned by war, sickness, cruelty and corruption.

The Sugar Barons explores the lives and experiences of those whose fortunes rose and fell with the West Indian empire. From the ambitious and brilliant entrepreneurs, to the grandees wielding power across the Atlantic, to the inheritors often consumed by decadence, disgrace and madness, this is a compelling story of how a few small islands and a handful of families decisively shaped the British Empire.

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.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'A shocking tale of corruption and brutality . . . an admirable and gripping history '

Sunday Times

' Very impressive - a meticulously researched piece of work, and so engagingly written . . . what a story !'

Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and Long Song

The familiar image of the West Indies as paradise islands conceals a turbulent past. For 200 years after 1650 they were the most fought over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold.

Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors of life in Britain created immense dynastic wealth but produced a society poisoned by war, sickness, cruelty and corruption.

The Sugar Barons explores the lives and experiences of those whose fortunes rose and fell with the West Indian empire. From the ambitious and brilliant entrepreneurs, to the grandees wielding power across the Atlantic, to the inheritors often consumed by decadence, disgrace and madness, this is a compelling story of how a few small islands and a handful of families decisively shaped the British Empire.

'A fascinating and bloody tale. . . an antidote to the modern strain of neo-conservative history that says empire was rather a good thing'

Financial Times

'A tumultuous rollercoaster of a book . . . Mr Parker tells an extraordinary, neglected and shameful history with gusto '

Economist

'A magnificent account of a bleak and torrid era, told with great humanity . . . as a portrait of the heat, horror and vanity of that time, The Sugar Barons is surely without equal '

Spectator

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.