This important book assesses the size and nature of Caribbean
slavery's economic impact in British society. The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy, a
grouping of West India merchants and planters, became active before the
emancipation of chattel slavery in the British West Indies in 1834. Many
acquired nationally significant fortunes, and their investments percolated into
the Scottish economy and wider society. At its core, the book traces the development
of merchant capital and poses several interrelated questions during an era of rapid
transformation, namely, what impact the private investments of West India merchants
and colonial adventurers had on metropolitan society and the economy, as well as
the wider effects of such commerce on industrial and agricultural development.
The book also examines the fortunes of temporary Scottish
economic migrants who travelled to some of the wealthiest of the Caribbean islands,
presenting the first large-scale survey of repatriated slavery fortunes via
case studies of Scots in Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad before emancipation in
1834. It therefore takes a new approach to illuminate the world of individuals
who acquired West India fortunes and ultimately explores, in an Atlantic frame,
the interconnections between the colonies and metropole in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries.
