Legacies of British Slave-Ownership
Legacies of British Slave-Ownership
Nicholas Draper, University College London
Keith McClelland, University College London
Katie Donington, University College London
Rachel Lang, University College London
This book re-examines the relationship between Britain and colonial slavery in a crucial period in the birth of modern Britain. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of British slave-owners and mortgagees who received compensation from the state for the end of slavery, and tracing their trajectories in British life, the volume explores the commercial, political, cultural, social, intellectual, physical and imperial legacies of slave-ownership. It transcends conventional divisions in history-writing to provide an integrated account of one powerful way in which Empire came home to Victorian Britain, and to reassess narratives of West Indian 'decline'. It will be of value to scholars not only of British economic and social history, but also of the histories of the Atlantic world, of the Caribbean and of slavery, as well as to those concerned with the evolution of ideas of race and difference and with the relationship between past and present.
- A team of leading British and imperial historians reveal the importance of slave ownership to the economic, political and cultural development of modern Britain
- Integrates large-scale data and detailed case studies to show the political, social, economic and cultural legacy of slaveholding
- Closely integrated with the online Encyclopedia of British Slave-Owners which details every slave-owner in the British Caribbean, Mauritius or the Cape at the moment of abolition in 1833
Reviews & endorsements
'This is an important book which contributes significantly to modern British history. It, and the data which underpin it, have the potential not only to re-construct our national memory but also to inform related projects in countries such as France and the Netherlands, studies of re-investment in Britain's 'informal' empire in the Americas, and demands from Caribbean states for reparations for the enduring suffering inflicted by the Atlantic slave trade.' Mandy Banton, Family and Community History
Product details
August 2014Hardback
9781107040052
338 pages
231 × 152 × 28 mm
0.62kg
13 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Possessing people: absentee slave-owners within British society
- 3. Helping make Britain great: the commercial legacies of slave-ownership in Britain
- 4. Redefining the West India interest: politics and the legacies of slave-ownership
- 5. Reconfiguring race: the stories the slave-owners told
- 6. Transforming capital: slavery, family, commerce and the making of the Hibbert family
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1. Making history in a prosopography
- Appendix 2. Glossary of claimant categories
- Appendix 3. A note on the database
- Bibliography.
