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