Bibliograph

The first black slave society, Britain's "barbarity time" in Barbados, 1636-1876, Hilary McD. Beckles

Type

Label

The first black slave society, Britain's "barbarity time" in Barbados, 1636-1876, Hilary McD. Beckles

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The first black slave society

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Hilary McD. Beckles

Sub title

Britain's "barbarity time" in Barbados, 1636-1876

Summary

In this remarkable exploration of the brutal course of Barbados's history, Hilary McD. Beckles details the systematic barbarism of the British colonial project. Trade in enslaved Africans was not new in the Americas in the seventeenth century, the Portuguese and Spanish had commercialized chattel slavery in Brazil and Cuba in the 1500s, but in Barbados, the practice of slavery reached its apotheosis. Barbados was the birthplace of British slave society and the most ruthlessly colonized. The geography of Barbados was ideally suited to sugar plantations and there were enormous fortunes to be made for British royalty and ruling elites from sugar produced by an enslaved, "disposable" workforce, fortunes that secured Britain's place as an imperial superpower. The inhumane legacy of plantation society has shaped modern Barbados and this history must be fully understood by the inheritors on both sides of the power dynamic before real change and reparatory justice can take place

Target audience

adult

Classification