Sugar Barons

This book is very well detailed. Parker definitely did his research, and does a great job of providing perspective and analysis of the trade, and the complexities between the models of the Spanish, English, Dutch, etc. I really liked that he included so much information on the Carib tribe, I felt that made the book that much stronger. Every time I read the passages of the book I feel like I am there watching it happen. It is a good book for those who are not well-versed in Caribbean slave-trade history, and for those who are. There is a large amount of information about the actual Sugar Barons, which is often left out of narratives in modern day courses about the region.I thought I would like this book, because I studied history in college and graduate school, but I really do love it much more than I expected. Every section is interesting and has a ton of great information from primary sources. I really enjoy the excellent descriptions that Parker provides. If I were teaching a seminar class, I would definitely have this book on the reading list. I want to find a way to implement it into my American Civ and World classes now!! Overall, great book if you want to learn even more about one of the most important turns in the history of the western hemisphere.

An excellently written and well researched account of the development of the sugar empires in the new world in the 1600 and 1700s, and the European wars for its dominance. While very educational and informative, it flows well and is not textbook-like or stilted. I had a difficult time with the graphic descriptions of the cruelty and depravity with which the slaves, on whose backs the sugar empires were built, were treated. Nothing I had ever read before about slavery had come close to bringing so to life the horrors of slavery. Overall, a really good chronology of a very interesting time in the history of the new world, and its complex relationship with the "mother countries" of Europe.

Parker's book does a really good job of relating the interconnection between sugar and empire. There was a lot more trade and migration between Barbados and BNA than you would have thought. A death certificate at Black Rock of a woman who died in 1843 lists her place of birth in 1776 as "BNA". A kindly person in he Black Rock staff explained that "BNA" meant "British North America"He also cleared up the interconnections between slavery and Yellow Fever; it is an African disease, not Caribbean, and slaves had some resistance while whites and Indians did not. An old family story old by my great aunt, a 12th generation Barbadian, was how country cousins from St Joseph came to visit relatives in St. Michael (Bridgetown) sometime in the 1720s and found everyone dead, even the servants. St.MIchael was always unhealthy, built on a swamp and exposed to disease from ships' crews.

Should be required reading in all public schools. It is packed full of information that discussion groups on all levels need to review.

Finally! Someone has written a history of the West Indies that is a riveting read, not just a chronicle of how many times each island changed hands. The author, Matthew Parker, has managed to make sense of the messy history of the region in a highly entertaining read filled with historical facts and fascinating characters. Parker gives the sugar industry a human face and looks at early settlements in the Caribbean from the point of view of personalities as opposed to nations. He also shows how the geography of the region impacted on the history. This should be a textbook for every CXC Caribbean HIstory class and CAPE Caribbean Studies class.

A very compelling read that completes a major part of the puzzle of slavery and the influence of the sugar islands. Get ready to explore a world that is turned upside down and the appetite for the small white granules moves nations. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and discovered something about our world that continues to amaze and disgust.

This is a must read for anyone who is interested in the development of the sugar trade and well as the history of the Caribbean. The book is well researched and has very good intercepts directly from historical source materials.To enhance the reader experience i would recommend doing a bit of light research on the Caribbean islands and slave trade. I recommend this because the book has alot of detail and it might be a good idea to get some high level information so the reader can enjoy the book more.

Mathew Parker does a great job of relating an obscure piece of history with events from European and American history. The ups and downs of the sugar market and the consequences thereof are told well. Lots of obscure events with major consequences for the world

An outstanding book. I now know where the money that funded the industrial revolution came from, the money of the people in big houses and why the miners, factory workers , Irish peasants was little different to Africans captured and sold by other Africans. The rich get richer even today.

This substantial work presents a fascinating history of the West Indies and the major role that these small islands played for over two hundred years in the colonial history of Britain. This pre-eminent role was due to the cultivation of the immensely lucrative crop, sugar. The author, Matthew Parker, has clearly undertaken a prodigious quantity of research in areas not usually covered by works found on British bookshelves; the West Indies and the North American colonies. Parker tells an intriguing tale of early settlement in the West Indies where colonists and planters managed to make a living and eventually prosper despite the depredations caused by the indigenous people, atrocious conditions, frequent wars with Spain and France, and the most calamitous of all, an appalling death rate often equal to that of the great plagues, mainly due to yellow fever. The author describes the cultivation of sugar, initially on the island of Barbados and then the Leeward Islands and finally on an altogether massive scale on Jamaica. In the process he charts the rise of the Drax, Codringtons and Beckfords, the premier sugar barons. Sugar sold for immense sums but was highly labour intensive to grow, complicated to process and soil depleting, factors which inevitably lead to the utilisation of slave labour to make such a hazardous project financially viable.The elements of the slave trade are explained and there is a section on the growth of buccaneering and piracy. This later subject had me recalling books I had read as a child and it was wonderful to see some of these larger than life characters in the pages of a serious history book.Perhaps some of the most interesting parts of the book relate to the interplay and mutual dependence between the West Indies and the North American colonies, and why during the 17th and 18th centuries the West Indies appeared to be the more valuable to Britain. The early factors which sowed the seeds of rebellion in North America, the Navigation Act, the Molasses Act and other trade restrictions, not to mention the removal of the French threat from Canada, are interesting and show that there was more to this than is often represented by just the `Boston Tea Party'. Unfortunately the all too familiar story of British government incompetence and misjudgement plays a major role. The story of filial squandering of hard earned sugar fortunes also makes for depressing reading.This book can be quite heavy going at times and might have been an easier read had some of the sections on minor and rather inconsequential characters been omitted, however, it must be very difficult to discard hard won research. Nevertheless this is an illuminating read and throws quite a different slant on early English colonial history.

Absolutely fascinating investigation of the sugar business in the 17th-19th centuries in the Caribbean. The author makes this very readable but manages to pack in lots of research. The links with the enslavement of African people, the US War of Independence and wars in Europe are discussed and in the process helped me understand globalisation in the period under review. There was no internet at the time obviously but there was still much communication via mail, much of which the author has read as is obvious from this book. The pressures to "keep up with Joneses" and "one's position" in Society were huge for some and fuelled the horrible treatment of human beings in the process. An important book, which exposes the brutish nastiness behind some of the financial activities of the middle and upper levels of British society during the period.

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 readIt totally opened my eyes on the sugar and slave trade as well as the west Indies and their personalities.Proper research work gone into it.Amazed by it through out the book.

This is the way history should be recorded and presented. It was listed for my Reading Circle and, as I'd spent many holidays in the West Indies, I thought it might be of special interest - and I was not disappointed. In mirror history, the European wars were fought out among the islands as individually they rose or fell with the fortunes of the Spanish, French, English, Portugese and the Dutch, cursed by terrible weather, harsh terrain, plague and successions of armies, not to mention the greed and exploitation of the barrons themselves. If only my history teacher had had such skills I would not have forsaken her subject too early for my O Levels, and my life might have been changed for ever!