The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies

To those who travel there today the West Indies are unspoiled paradise islands Yet that image conceals a turbulent and shocking history For some years after the West Indies were the strategic center of the western world witnessing 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 it became known as quotwhite goldquot As Matthew Parker vividly chronicles in his sweeping history the sugar revolution made the English in particular a nation of voracious consumers-so much so that the wealth of her island colonies became the foundation and focus of Englands 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 cultureWhile sugar came to dictate imperial policy for those on the ground the British West Indian empire presented a disturbing moral universe Parker brilliantly interweaves the human stories of those since lost to history whose fortunes and fame rose and fell with sugar Their industry drove the development of the North American mainland states and with it a slave culture as the plantation model was exported to the warm southern states 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.