Heiresses

From Jamaica to Charleston, Sierra Leone to Bombay, China to Australia, back to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, this is the story of the heiresses--and the role they played in the history of enslavement. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was a fact universally acknowledged that any man in want of a great fortune ought find himself a Caribbean heiress. Their assets, the product of the exploitation of enslaved Africans, enabled them to marry into the top tiers of the aristocracy and attracted the attention of fortune-hunters. They fell in love (not always with their husbands), eloped, divorced, squandered fortunes, threw parties, went mad and (in once case) faked a daughter's death.

In her much anticipated follow up to Black Tudors, Miranda Kaufmann peers beneath our pastel-hued, Jane Austen inspired image of the Georgian heiress to reveal a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting and human exploitation.

Uncovering the lives of nine women who made their fortunes in the Caribbean slave trade, Heiresses provides a compelling and often shocking account of how Britain profited and continues to profit from the slave trade. In the vein of Empireland, Natives and White Debt, Heiresses promises a meticulously researched and readable exploration of the darker side of British history.