White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution By texasbeerguide.com
The sugar planter Simon Taylor, who claimed ownership of over 2,248 enslaved people in Jamaica at the point of his death in 1813, was one of the wealthiest slaveholders ever to have lived in the British empire.
Slavery was central to the eighteenth century empire. Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people were brought from Africa to the Caribbean to toil and die within the brutal slave regime of the region, most of them destined for a life of labour on
large sugar plantations. Their forced labour provided the basis for the immense fortunes of plantation owners like Taylor; it also produced wealth that poured into Britain. However, a tumultuous period that saw the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, as well as the rise of the abolitionist
movement, witnessed new attacks on slavery and challenged the power of a once confident slaveholder elite.
In White Fury, Christer Petley uses Taylor's rich and expressive letters to allow us an intimate glimpse into the aspirations and frustrations of a wealthy and powerful British slaveholder during the Age of Revolution. The letters provide a fascinating insight into the merciless machinery and
unpredictable hazards of the Jamaican plantation world; into the ambitions of planters who used the great wealth they extracted from Jamaica to join the ranks of the British elite; and into the impact of wars, revolutions, and fierce political struggles that led, eventually, to the reform of the
exploitative slave system that Taylor had helped buildand which he defended right up until the last weak scratches of his pen.
White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution
An interesting book from an unusual perspective. It highlights an area of history from the point of view of one person in a provoking and subtle manner. Christer cleverly tells a story with intriguing background information to build a picture of a life which seemed justifiable at the time. White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution
