Heiresses and Rebels: Stories of Money, Exploitation and Resistance in Caribbean and Atlantic Slavery

The new books by award winning and nominated historians Miranda Kaufmann and Sudhir Hazareesingh are both major contributors to the understanding of Caribbean and Atlantic slavery, using meticulous research to reveal lesser known but critically important stories – on the one hand, of the women enslavers and plantation owners, and on the other, of the enslaved people who resisted and rebelled.

In Heiresses: Marriage,Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery, Miranda Kaufmann shows how inheritance and matrimony enabled women to acquire vast, slave-produced wealth generated by the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and which poured into Britain. She looks at nine heiresses, as examples of those who bought country houses, gilt furniture and opulent paintings, married into the top tiers of the aristocracy and attracted the attention of fortune-hunters. She also reveals some of the extraordinary stories of individuals who were enslaved – including a woman who travelled all the way from Barbados to London to confront her enslavers – and shows how the legacy of enslavement continues around us.

In Daring To Be Free, Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, Sudhir Hazareesingh explores how the enslaved resisted their oppressors from the 16th century until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865. He portrays the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved, wherever possible in their own words. From revolutionaries like Toussaint Louverture to the pregnant rebel Solitude to the narrative accounts of Frederick Douglass and others and the stories of countless maroons, insurgents and conspirators whose acts of defiance resilience, solidarity destabilised the slave order in the colonies and galvanized the movement for abolition in France, Britain, and the United States. Hazareesingh gives particular emphasis to the powerful roles of women as campaigners, disruptors and warriors

Hosted by Nicole-Rachelle Moore, Curator of Caribbean Collections at the British Library.

Followed by a book signing.

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