Sunday, December 31, 2017

Sugar in the Blood - Andrea Stuart

Subtitle: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire

In 2015 I found a reference to this novel and put it on my TBR list. It is a historical account of slavery's establishment in the Western hemisphere, beginning in Barbados and the West Indies. My son's grandfather was born in Barbados, immigrating with his family to the United States as a child. I wanted to learn more about the history of the island and its people. The book did not disappoint.

The author is a descendent of a white plantation owner and his slave wife, a mulatto who herself descended from slaves brought from Africa in the 1700's. The society in Barbados in the late 1700's and into the early 1800's was a blended hierarchy of races, that broke into separate camps when those at the lowest rungs rose up to protest.

The second part of the book describes how the overwhelming desire for sugar from the new world turned the slave trade into a massive business enterprise that destroyed the native population and their society in the name of greed.

I found no mention of my son's ancestors who I've traced back to the early 1800's in Barbados on his paternal side. Future research!


Published: 2013 Read: November 2017 Genre: History



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