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The Sugar Barons

Matthew Parker (Goodreads Author)

3.95 · Rating details · 548 ratings · 96 reviews

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 ...more

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Hardcover, 446 pages

Published April 1st 2011 by Hutchinson Radius

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Oct 22, 2016 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: caribbean, history, 2016-150-reviews, reviewed, 2016-read

I am not pleased to think that in the House of Lords, sitting making laws that affect the British people are the descendants of these sugar barons, slavers all. They made their money through the exploitation and total control over the lives and deaths of others. They purchased estates in Britain and fancy clothes and with their money married well. Some were rewarded by being elevated into the aristocracy, others bought their peerages by laying out funds to those who could propose them. And now, ...more

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Jun 16, 2015 Joshua Rigsby rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, research

Every wound the human race has inflicted upon itself: colonialism, slavery, rape, murder, torture, venereal disease, theft, war, sedition, genocide, binge drinking, binge eating, exorbitant wealth, violent poverty, forced self-cannibalism, piracy, sloth, deception, treason, and abuse of every conceivable color are found with suffocating thickness throughout the history of the West Indies.

After reading Parker's account, it's hard to believe that there was any place on earth worse than the Caribb Every wound the human race has inflicted upon itself: colonialism, slavery, rape, murder, torture, venereal disease, theft, war, sedition, genocide, binge drinking, binge eating, exorbitant wealth, violent poverty, forced self-cannibalism, piracy, sloth, deception, treason, and abuse of every conceivable color are found with suffocating thickness throughout the history of the West Indies.

After reading Parker's account, it's hard to believe that there was any place on earth worse than the Caribbean islands between 1500 and 1830.

When people were not suffering at the hands of other people, they were enduring the unfeeling, heartlessness of nature. The lifespan of the Carib native peoples was predictably short once the Europeans arrived, as the Old World diseases killed off those who survived the colonists' intentional attempts to work them to death. But the lifespan of the colonists was also unimaginably short too, as disease-loaded mosquitoes injected white after white with yellow fever, cholera, and malaria, which thrived in the swampy, unbearably hot climate, wreaking havoc on native and nonnative alike.

Only slightly more resilient to the diseases were the enslaved people brought in from Africa. These people were forced to work until they died of exhaustion.

The Caribbean islands were constantly squabbled over by the European powers. Any war between England, France, Spain and the Netherlands had repercussions in the islands, leading to sorties, raids and, often, the death of hundreds if not thousands. Both the Royalists and the Parliamentarians in the English civil war used the islands as pawns. Those soldiers who were spared by combat were killed by disease.

When humans and disease weren't killing off the population, hurricanes and earthquakes were. Every hundred years or so the islands would be leveled by massive acts of nature. People were trapped under rubble or buried to their heads in sand, the islands stank of rotting corpses for weeks.

Parker does a great job of conveying the cycles of violence and death that washed through the Caribbean with nauseous frequency. There is little to redeem them. Missionaries and social attitudes toward the enslaved people change with frustrating slowness. Inexplicably, conscientious writers convey the horrendousness of the slave trade, but can't find themselves able to condemn slavery as an institution for hundreds of years. It just made too much economic and biblical sense. They didn't have the imagination to conceive of any other way.

The book is well researched and written, and a must-read for anyone who, like myself, knows too little about the history of the area.

http://joshuarigsby.com ...more

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Apr 16, 2014 Caroline rated it really liked it

Shelves: english-history

I could never have thought I would find myself so engrossed in a history of sugar production in the British West Indies, ie. Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua etc. I could hardly put this book down. In the wrong hands this could have been an immensely dull and dry scholarly work, but Parker writes with real flair, populating his narrative with colourful figures, both sympathetic and abhorrent. Pirates, slaves, merchants, traders, plantation owners, politicians, rebels, soldiers and sailors, they're all ...more

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Aug 14, 2011 Alistair rated it it was amazing

In south dorset past stonehenge i have often driven past a landed estate with a wall which seems to go on four miles and miles and the estate seems to belong to the Drax family . It has a suitable iron gate with lions or some such animal perched on the pillars . in Oxford there is a library set up by the will of Christopher Codrington at All Soul's College which contains a collection only secondary to the Bodleian . Fonthill Abbey was built by William Beckford in the 18th century after his fathe ...more

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Nov 02, 2015 Martin rated it really liked it

An adequate history of the West Indies’ sugar plantations, their rise and fall, and their importance in gaining wealth for the overall British Empire as the central focus of the rum-sugar-slave trade. My only real problem with the book was that it was a very well-researched but strictly factual transmission of information. I do appreciate a historian’s voice occasionally making a wry interpretation. (We’re so spoiled with the plethora of great historians at the moment – it’s no longer good enoug An adequate history of the West Indies’ sugar plantations, their rise and fall, and their importance in gaining wealth for the overall British Empire as the central focus of the rum-sugar-slave trade. My only real problem with the book was that it was a very well-researched but strictly factual transmission of information. I do appreciate a historian’s voice occasionally making a wry interpretation. (We’re so spoiled with the plethora of great historians at the moment – it’s no longer good enough to examine a neglected topic in-depth, you have to be funny, too, like Simon Schama.)

In the 1680s, the British were making more money from the Barbados sugar plantations than from the entire North American colonies. The planters who did best were the ones who took their profits and made diversified investments back in England rather than in the West Indies. The economy was usually lucrative as one of the key destinations in the sugar/rum/slave trade, but the economy was at the mercy of tremendous forces such as massive weather patterns, earthquakes, diseases from the Americas, Europe and Africa, to say nothing of piracy and intense competition with the Spanish, Dutch and French both in the Caribbean and elsewhere at war with each other.

The islands needed constant reinforcements of provisions and soldiers. Fatalism, fast living, and callous treatment of others became the prevailing way of life due to the toiling lifestyle and high fatality rate. In London, the unhealthiest place in Britain, sickness was concentrated among the poor. In Barbados, however, one third of the British immigrants died within five years, and only one third of marriages had surviving children. Most families survived only a few generations, and even rich families easily slid into decline.

Planters didn’t want small scale farmers on the island, and there was no land left to give men who had completed their indentured servitude. This discouraged immigration from England, where birth rates also had fallen, providing more subsistence at home and less inclination to have a go at a land where the cards were clearly stacked against newcomers. The indentured servant class in the West Indies became hopeless, turning either docile and childlike or shiftless and alcoholic, as they responded to their meager food and shelter and hard labor. (These are qualities later ascribed to primarily to blacks as a justification for their continued slavery, although they are the most natural response to anyone in this kind of abject misery.) Indentured servitude had started with a contract for collaboration with the planter, but eventually the servants became more like property, and it was an easy step into chattel slavery once the slave trade began in earnest. The Africans were seen as superior in most ways to the white servants as they had better physical health, more inclination to work, more resistance to the noxious mix of diseases (particularly the African Yellow Fever which decimated Europeans and native Caribbeans alike) on the islands. Initially, the Africans’ intelligence and hard work enabled many of them to leapfrog over the poor whites and learn valuable trades, and occasionally earn their freedom. However, after some revolts the British understood how outnumbered they were by their slaves, sometimes 3:1.

The idea of race and of ‘blackness’ had existed for centuries, as it was particularly useful for Muslim slavers to construct black people as perfectly suited for slavery. However, there had not been a solid, workable concept of ‘whiteness’, meaning a master race native to Europe (the more northern the better). The term ‘white’ became defined at this time, as a concept useful for quickly delineating people who were meant to be servile at best, less than human at worst, but always only as good as their productivity for white people. This form of slavery was later exported to the Deep South, and this form of racism/social control has never disappeared from the culture of the United States, no matter how much it is talked about. Slave birth rates were very low due to poor health of the women, and if they happened to carry a child to term, the baby usually perished because the mother was sent back to work immediately. Slavery in the West Indies became much derided in the press at home, but the focus was always on the abhorrent conditions of slavery, not the very existence of it. Eventually, in the early 1800’s, once the Atlantic slave trade ended, sugar was produced more cheaply elsewhere and in more places, and wars with France and the U.S. kept disrupting trade (along with subsequent treaties de-monopolizing the sugar market), this entire way of life went into sharp decline. Barbados suffered from soil exhaustion, while Jamaica suffered from internal instability due to the constant threat of revolt, particularly from the Maroons, communities in the interior consisting of former slaves who escaped from the Spanish and joined with the remaining native Tainos. As the West Indies waned, India was on the rise, the newest and brightest jewel in Britain’s crown, and the British embarked on their East Indian enterprise armed with better management techniques learned in the West Indies.

...more

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Jul 02, 2014 Hudson rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction-history

This is a great book that I would recommend to any fan of history. Parker like all great history writers is able to basically tell a story along with providing the hard facts and dates. I was really amazed to see how involved Boston MA and Newport RI were in the slave trade at the time, slave money practically built Newport it seems! It was also interesting to see the role that sugar played in the American Revolution. Basically ultra rich planters from the Indies started sending all their men to ...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Manray9 rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-history

Matthew Parker’s The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies is a fine narrative on the nature of British imperialism in the Caribbean and North America. This historical epoch, despite our mythology, had much less to do with religious tolerance and political liberty than it did with greed and exploitation. Some things never change.

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Aug 21, 2018 Jay rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One of the best pieces of historical writing I’ve ever read. WiIl have more to say at a later date. What stands out to me in particular is the monumental death toll of indigenous peoples, African slaves, civilian colonists of all nationalities, soldiers and sailors of all nationalities, slaves, that occurred in the West Indies between the early 1600’s and mid 19th century brought on by the seemingly perpetual armed conflict, disease, human brutality, and periodic catastrophic hurricanes - togeth One of the best pieces of historical writing I’ve ever read. WiIl have more to say at a later date. What stands out to me in particular is the monumental death toll of indigenous peoples, African slaves, civilian colonists of all nationalities, soldiers and sailors of all nationalities, slaves, that occurred in the West Indies between the early 1600’s and mid 19th century brought on by the seemingly perpetual armed conflict, disease, human brutality, and periodic catastrophic hurricanes - together with millions of pounds (British) in losses alone from all the aforementioned causes, property damages, and economic folly. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of British colonial history in the Americas, but this book was an education in and of itself of French, English, Spanish and Dutch activities and depredations in the New World Caribbean theatre. This book also shed interesting light on the activities of American colonists who were involved in the sugar, slavery and rum trades. There is a wealth of historical information that is worth the time it takes to read (or in my case listen to) this book.

An unexpected treat for me, as a once and future Rhode Islander were the sections recounting the activities of Abraham Redwood (founder, eventually, of the Redwood Library in Newport, RI - the oldest lending library in the U.S.) and the Brown family of Providence (John, Moses, Nicholas and Obadiah), founders, eventually, of my alma mater, Brown University, and how much of their fortunes were derived from the blood money of sugar profits earned from slave-worked plantations and sugar processing, and slavery itself. The Browns eventually split within their own family with Moses working directly against his brother John for the eventual abolition of slavery in Rhode Island. Redwood was expelled by his fellow Quakers from the Society of Friends in Newport, but nevertheless bequeathed a considerable legacy to found the aforesaid library (an amazing place housing not only books, but a number of Gilbert Stuart portraits) and a Quaker school in Newport.

There is a fair amount of information in the book also of the extent of trade between gathering New England colonies (pre-independence) and the West Indian British, French and Dutch colonies, a large portion of it illegally conducted in derogation of the British Navigation Acts to the great chagrin of the English/British government. Highly recommended reading.

...more

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Dec 28, 2013 George Roper rated it really liked it

In relation to the book, Sugar Barons, you can find an excellent synopsis at this link, which is a video of a presentation the author made at a literary festival - Write Idea - in 2011 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCasM...

The book Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker deals with the rise and fall of the pioneers of the British colonial slave plantation system which sought to capitalize on the home country's appetite for refined sugar, used in the 17th and 18th centuries to sweeten teas and the cul In relation to the book, Sugar Barons, you can find an excellent synopsis at this link, which is a video of a presentation the author made at a literary festival - Write Idea - in 2011 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCasM...

The book Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker deals with the rise and fall of the pioneers of the British colonial slave plantation system which sought to capitalize on the home country's appetite for refined sugar, used in the 17th and 18th centuries to sweeten teas and the culinary delights which were (and are still) hallmarks of British culture and life.

Parker in doing research for the book tried to find out the answers to a number of questions, the most important of which was "Why did the English, who once openly abhorred slavery and the slave trade, so willingly embrace it with the advent of sugar monoculture in the West Indies?". Part of the answer is to be found in the fact that the West Indies was "beyond the line" - it was remote from England and so isolated from standard British values and moral sensibilities. It is interesting that during the height of the plantation system and the reign of "King Sugar" slavery was effectively outlawed within England itself (Lord Mansfield's judgement in the celebrated Somerset case of 1771 -72 was interpreted as freeing all slaves on English soil). Not so in the West Indies though (British West Indies slavery only ended in 1838, 66 years after the Somerset case).

The early Barons were self-made grandees who became"filthy rich", with emphasis on the adjective "filthy" since their wealth was based on the brutal and vulgar exploitation of enslaved Africans and before them the almost equally harsh treatment of the indigenous peoples of the islands and poor indentured "bondsmen" from England, Scotland and Ireland. But the African, since they were mere property, did not - unlike the bondsmen - have a certain expectation to one day be rid of the denigration and dehumanizing experience of plantation life.

The book is written in a style that will appeal to those readers who enjoy being engrossed in epic period novels spanning several generations. There is some racy material in the book too (mildly Gothic and somewhat titillating in effect), as you would expect to find in a modern epic novel. Parker focuses much of our attention on three pioneering families: the Drax family (Barbados), the Codringtons (Barbados and the Leeward Islands) and the Beckfords (Jamaica). He relies extensively on letters, diaries, wills, official documents and history books written during the period of "King Sugar", when tremendous wealth flowed into England from its West Indian colonies. So expansive was the wealth repatriated from the West Indies, that the British regarded their possessions in the Caribbean islands as being far more important to the Empire than the colonies in North America!

Though I was a student of history in a West Indian high school (all seven years) there are many facts exposed in Sugar Barons which were not included in the text books covering my West Indian history syllabus. One of those facts is the Diary of Thomas Thistlewood - a salacious yet illuminating record of plantation life during the period of slavery. The chapters in Sugar Barons covering Thistlewood, an overseer on a Jamaican plantation, elicited the strongest emotional response from me during my journey through the pages of the book. Thistlewood it appears, in an over 10,000 page diary, detailed realities of plantation life in 18th century Jamaica: the revolts, the horrific types of punishment meted out to runaway slaves (including "Darby's Dose"), dalliances with slaves (much not consensual we are sure), the romantic feelings he eventually developed for one of the female slaves, the hurricanes and the more mundane aspects of social life for English and white West Indian creoles "beyond the line", where normal class distinctions applicable in England became blurred and of no effect.

If you enjoyed reading Ian Thompson's The Dead Yard - there is a connection between that book and Sugar Barons. The Dead Yard focused on "what Jamaica is", Sugar Barons helps to explain "why Jamaica is what it is".
...more

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Sep 11, 2019 Yibbie rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I did not finish this book. The whole book was an incredibly detailed look at the history of the Caribean Islands. In minute detail we learn about the settling, planting, and cultivating of the major islands owned by the British. It covers personal lives, political jocking, and military maneuvers of all the major sugar planters.
I was starting to get very interested in the trade conflicts that were starting to emerge between the Northern Colonies, the islands, and England. It was also interest ...more

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Mar 28, 2018 Ted Dettweiler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: goodreads-from-the-library

Essential reading on the history of the Caribbean focusing mostly on Barbados and Jamaica. Not a pleasant read - it opened my eyes to much sordid history involving British colonization (this book only covers British sugar barons) and the exploitation and abuse of slaves and indentured labour that began starting in 1605 (Barbados). Gave me a good understanding to the ties between these islands and the American colonies and the various wars affecting the Caribbean and the Americas which involved t ...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Helen Hanschell Pollock rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned-books

Bridget Brereton Deputy Principal of the University of the West Indies, in a review of this book writes"the book belongs to an older tradition of writing West Indian histories, the tradition that was dominant up to the 1950s, before the “decolonisation” of Caribbean historiography. This older school had no doubt that the creators of Caribbean history were Europeans. These were the men (hardly ever women) who “founded her [England’s] colonies, fought her battles, covered the ocean with commerce, Bridget Brereton Deputy Principal of the University of the West Indies, in a review of this book writes"the book belongs to an older tradition of writing West Indian histories, the tradition that was dominant up to the 1950s, before the “decolonisation” of Caribbean historiography. This older school had no doubt that the creators of Caribbean history were Europeans. These were the men (hardly ever women) who “founded her [England’s] colonies, fought her battles, covered the ocean with commerce, and spread our race over the planet to leave a mark upon it which time will not efface,” in the words of J.A. Froude, one of the main writers of this school. Froude wrote in the 1880s, but in a book published in 1951, W.L. Burn wrote that the real interest in studying the region’s past was as the scene of the “thoughts and activities of men, and especially of Englishmen, over three centuries.” And in his History of the British West Indies, published in 1954, Sir Alan Burns saw the history of the region as “mainly the story of the white conquerors and settlers, as the much larger Negro population, during the centuries of slavery, had little to do, save indirectly, with the shaping of events.” The story of the conquerors and settlers, Burns noted, was “one of brave deeds and romance, and, unfortunately, of abominable cruelty” — but good or bad, that was the story that counted.

So Matthew Parker’s ambitious book is old-fashioned in the sense that it deals with the settlement of the English colonies in the Caribbean, the wars and British military or naval campaigns, the misdeeds of the buccaneers and their fraternity, the politics of the white settlers, the building of fortunes by the sugar planters. All these are perfectly legitimate topics for historical enquiry, but none is likely to be chosen by most of today’s generation of Caribbean historians — perhaps to their and our loss. It’s old-fashioned too in being essentially narrative history. Of course, there’s some analysis, and some “pauses” in the narrative flow, but basically Parker aims to tell a series of interrelated stories as dramatically as possible. But since there’s been something of a “return” to narrative history in recent years, he may in fact be ahead rather than behind the trends here.' ...more

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Apr 13, 2019 June rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library-finds, nonfiction, caribbean-reads, history

This book has been an emotional experience. This well researched book chronicles the rise and fall of the West Indian planter. A small number of unremarkable men rose to prominence in the 15- 18th century. It looks at major family based in Barbados, Jamaica and eastern America. Each island has a less than stellar beginning, odds are against the planter. Only the resourceful succeed. With success, the ripple effect of slavery and its effect on both the planters and slaves is excellently related. ...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Martin Hogan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-history

I am writing this only halfway through reading all the pages.

I am appalled at the level of ultra-violence employed as a "lifestyle norm". The people featured are the builders of empire in North America. This West Indies culture transplanted itself in South Carolina to reinvigorate the profit-by-brutality business.

Jumping ahead on the political timeline, South Carolina can't escape it's past of empowering its history to positions of power.

My rant. The end. ...more

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May 03, 2013 Victoria JS rated it it was amazing

From the moment I saw this on the shelf at the bookstore I knew it would present a fantastic read. I wasn't disappointed. It serves to confirm what I have believed for some time - that the British Empire was built on greed, self-aggrandisement and the abuse, misery and suffering of others.
A fascinating history which I lent to a friend who promptly read within the week. Unputdownable. ...more

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Sep 11, 2018 Best Pants rated it it was amazing

I adored this book. Page after page of almost rote history. It delves deep into the lives of the Sugar Baron families, the West Indie slaves, and the small whites who made up the early settlers of the Caribbean. Parker details how sugar came to be a dominating factor in world politics for almost 200 years.

Every few chapters Parker transitions from the history of Sugar Baron families to the slave trade and how it had evolved over time. He outlines the methods of mistreatment, torture and executi ...more

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Jan 26, 2017 Leigh added it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

S0 much of American, British, and World History, for that matter, hinges upon what occurred in the West Indies during these years but for myself this history has always been told in more of a sideshow way to the subject matter I was looking at. It was very enlightening to focus in on the story in the Caribbean itself and see how the events there helped shape and were determined by events elsewhere.

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May 25, 2018 DANIEL LO rated it it was amazing

Eye-opener.

I decided to read this book as the reviews said that nevertheless long, it was easy to read. I couldn't agree more. The book is full of details but dynamic and an easy read. It gives the impression the author has no problem in telling things as they are.

It totally opened my eyes on the sugar and slave trade and on the west Indies and their personalities.

Proper research work gone into it.
Amazed by it through out the book. ...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Rennie rated it liked it

Not bad - some interesting tidbits would like to see the story from the side of a native of the West Indies. The slavery details were overdone and more real letters from people would have been interesting.

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Feb 10, 2016 Jenny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.5 stars really. I enjoyed this fascinating book and learnt a lot.

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Oct 08, 2017 Kgwhitehurst rated it liked it · review of another edition

There's plenty of good information in this work, but as a narrative, it wanders and circles around itself on occasion. It does so because it lacks a clear thesis that would've provided a solid roadmap for narration and analysis. The latter is weak and frequently simplistic.

Parker chose to the follow the most interesting characters (highly piratical in attitude, behavior, and brutality) in the colonization of the British Caribbean--the Draxes, the Beckfords, the Codringtons--to show how the fabu ...more

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Jan 04, 2019 Richard Nicklin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shocking, powerful but slow in places

An excellent book that truly illustrates the evils of slavery, and the pivotal role of the West Indies in England’s colonial system in the Americas. Between pg100-200 it does drag a bit with what feels like an interminable list of planet families and their crimes, however.

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Jul 29, 2017 Simone rated it it was ok

Shelves: gave-up-books

The topic of the book is a fascinating one, but it was told in a piecemeal, fragmented fashion. It could have been a fascinating narrative, instead it simply presented facts, one after the other. I ultimately gave up, which was disappointing because I really wanted to like this book.

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Dec 23, 2017 CW rated it liked it · review of another edition

I found it interesting but a hard read. Too much detail in my view but nonetheless the way it showed you the start and in many ways the end of the Sugar Barons was worth reading. However the details on the various wars could have been less in my view.

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Dec 12, 2017 Wauconda Library added it

Shelves: well-read, lynn-m

I've got so much to read lately that I'm usually happy to finish a book. This one I wanted more of. Fascinating topic and very well written. - Lynn M ...more

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Oct 18, 2018 Dan rated it it was amazing

Capitalism and racism come to the Caribbean. It's the sad beginnings of later horrors in the 19th Century -- many implications for early days in America, too. ...more

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Jul 18, 2019 Stephen rated it liked it

Detailed book about sugar in the west indies and how it became in 17-18th century a major cash crop also highlights the imperial tensions between rival colonies and countries

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Oct 22, 2019 Ankur Vohra rated it liked it

I found it to be informative but a bit slow read with lot of effort required for continued reading on a daily basis. Worth a read for history buffs I guess.

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Dec 13, 2019 XO rated it really liked it

Fortunes done on human misery, upon human misery, upon human misery... upon destroying natural resources and other species too. Bravo.

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Apr 26, 2020 Chris rated it really liked it

3.5 but rounded up.

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About Matthew Parker

Matthew Parker

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I'm currently working on a new book, due to be published in August 2015, that tells the extraordinary story of Willoughbyland, the forgotten seventeenth-century English colony in Suriname that was exchanged with the Dutch for New York.

When not reading, writing or staring out of the window, I love making sushi, pubs, growing stuff and visiting remote places.

I'm a member of the Authors Cricket Club, ...more