Blood Legacy: Reckoning With a Family’s Story of Slavery

by Alex Renton

Through the story of his own family's history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When the transatlantic slave trade was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The descendants of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today.

A group of Caribbean countries is calling on ten European nations to discuss the payment of trillions of dollars for the damage done by transatlantic slavery and its continuing legacy. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter and other activist groups are causing increasing numbers of white people to reflect on how this history of abuse and exploitation has benefited them.

Blood Legacy explores what inheritance - political, economic, moral and spiritual - has been passed to the descendants of the slave owners and the descendants of the enslaved. It travels through eighteenth-century Tobago and Trinidad, and nineteenth-century Jamaica, and Renton interviews people living in the Caribbean today.

He also asks, crucially, how the descendants of those slave owners – himself among them – can begin to make reparations for the past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, Memoir, Audiobook, Biography

400 pages, Hardcover

Published September 28, 2021

Reviews

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was reading this at the same as I was reading Black & British – a book that discussed the same topic from a different angle and using a different scale (Renton, for obvious reasons, has a more of a case study approach). Blood Legacy, as per the subtitle, discusses the legacy of slavery from the point of view of one family complicit in this barbarity. Both books, however, quote Eric Williams’ famous observation: “British historians write almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it.” This encapsulates the narrative around slavery in the UK, which focuses solely on the noble British who abolished it, forgetting someone had to introduce it first.

Unlike American slaveholders, many British ones (including the author’s ancestors) could remain conveniently detached from the reality of the practice by never visiting their plantations and outsourcing their management. Slavery being illegal* in the UK (and legal in its colonies) remained an abstract concept for most British people. I was surprised to learn that Scotland had even more slave-owners per capita than England. Somehow, they managed to sweep that under the rug so well that most people are bemused by the fact my Jamaican friend’s surname is McIntosh.

Renton tries as much as his sources would allow to centre his narrative around the enslaved people, but it is not an easy task. When most sources describe the enslaved people as nothing more than chattel, it is difficult to create a compelling story without ad-libbing and fantasising. Obviously, we still learn more about the author’s plantation owning ancestors than about the people over whose lives they ruled. In fact, we almost feel sorry for the hapless manager of the Tobago plantation.

Your question might be – how is this book ‘a reckoning’ if the author continues to benefit from slavery by, you know, writing a book about it? However, Renton reassures us that all proceeds from it are going directly to Caribbean charities. Renton also leaves us with some suggestions as to what else might be done, starting with a proper apology, and ending with reparations.

A lot of people balk at the idea of reparations, of having to pay for their ancestors’ sins. These people might consider the fact that up until 2015 the UK government was still using our taxes to pay off loans it took out to compensate slave owners for the loss of their ‘property’ after the abolition of slavery (which really didn’t abolish it right away, anyway, but that’s a story for another time).

* for an interesting explanation the legal situation of slaves in the UK check “Black & British” – it was not a straight forward issue, but a big legal conundrum.

[Martin Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose you could say that in writing this book Alex Renton is washing some very old and dirty family linen in public but thank goodness he has because this book is one of the most revealing dissertations on the slave trade I have ever read. Renton does not write about the triangular trade or the middle passage although inevitably he mentions them, instead he concentrates on his ancestors’ ownership of plantations in the West Indies and the slaves they own. It is not a pretty picture, and in some ways made even worse because in all other respects his family appear to be decent God-fearing pillars of society – acquaintances of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, landowners, lawyers and MPs. They didn’t actually run their plantations, that was left to junior family members or factors who were expected to report regularly by letter and who had to ask before making any decision involving expenditure. The reference to the slaves in the correspondence virtually never shows any interest in their welfare, they are treated in much the same way a factory owner would refer to inanimate stock today. It is a devastating inditement of the enterprise, but Renton goes further he points out that massive compensation was paid collectively to the slave owners after they managed to delay the abolition for many years and even when the slave trade was ended it was only the transatlantic trade and slaves were still bought and sold in the West Indies for many more years. Furthermore, history was then massaged to make Britain appear to be the good guys who singlehandedly stopped this dreadful trade when several other countries had ended it years before we did. Finally, and relevantly in light of the recent cut in overseas aid, whilst slave owners were compensated nothing was done to help the enslaved whose descendants marooned on the islands to which we shipped them too often still live in poverty. This book is very readable, I hope a lot of people do read it.

[David Kenvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. It is the story of how the author’s maternal ancestors, the Fergusson from Ayrshire, owned plantations, and therefore slaves, ion the Caribbean islands of Tobago and Jamaica in the middle of the C18th. It begins with Sir Adam, the 3rd Baronet, purchasing a small plot of land on Tobago to provide his youngest brother, James, with an income. James, remarkably for the time, shows an interest in his plantation and goes out to run it himself, as opposed to employing a manager. He decides not to grow sugar, the cash crop of the age, but rather to grow indigo and cotton in Bloody Bay, Tobago. The next stage, of course, was the purchase of slaves for the planting, growing and reaping of the crop. Sir Adam is quite clear that his brother needs to purchase young healthy men for the fieldwork, and some women for the cooking, cleaning and some fieldwork. Sir Adam is also quite clear that purchasing slaves straight off the ships from Africa does not make good economic sense, as they have not settled into the climate and may die before they develop immunity to the various diseases.
How do we know all this? Sir Adam was meticulous in recording the information about his purchase, and his successor Sir James Fergusson, the 8th baronet and the author’s grandfather, archived and preserved all the documents belonging to his ancestors. It is therefore possible to put together a coherent tale about the Fergusson family’s involvement in the plantations, in slavery and the slave trade. Their involvement in the Bloody Bay plantation on Tobago did not continue very long because James Fergusson died and, as he had no children, the family sold the estate. They did however have another plantation at Rozelle in Jamaica, which they owned jointly with their Ayrshire neighbours, the Hunter-Blairs. Sir David Hunter-Blair was quite content to let Sir Adam run the estate, and simply drew his share of the profits.
Most of the paperwork relates to the Rozelle Plantation, on the south east coast of Jamaica, in the parish of St Thomas in the East. This was a sugar plantation. It was not one of the most profitable in the Caribbean, but it still brought in a considerable income and allowed both the Fergussons and the Hunter-Blairs to live comfortably enough. Sir Adam is very concerned with the minutiae of its profitability, because his income and therefore his standing in the local community of Ayrshire depended on it. He was an MP which involved the expense of travelling to and from London, and of maintaining some accommodation there. He was of course deeply involved in the opposition to the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
One of the things that the author makes clear in this story is that most of the Ayrshire landed gentry owned plantations in the Caribbean. This meant that the involvement in slavery spread into the Ayrshire and other Scottish communities in all kinds of ways that people try to ignore nowadays. The plantocrats tended to recruit people to run their estates from their tenants on their Scottish holdings. It is hardly surprising that Robert Burns considered a career as a clerk on a plantation in Jamaica. Others went as overseers or as skilled craftsmen. Lawyers and their clerks were employed in both the West Indies and in Scotland. The Scottish financial sector grew because of the need to service both slavery, the slave trade and the profitability of the plantations. There was even a port on the Isle of Skye, at Isle Ornsay, that was developed specifically to send pickled herring to the Caribbean to feed the slaves, because it was cheap food, and this was not the only one along the west coast of Scotland. It was not just the obvious candidates who profited from slavery – the sailors on the slave ships, the dockworkers and the owners – who benefitted from the slave trade and slavery. Scotland’s economy was built upon slavery and we still benefit from that today.
There is one other factor to consider. When it became obvious that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was going to be abolished, Sir Adam began to consider the possible alternatives for maintaining his stock of slaves. The slave trade between the islands and the American mainland was not abolished. It was therefore possible to buy slaves from these locations. The trouble was that their owners wanted to get rid of them because they were “troublemakers” – that is rebels, runaways and the like. Most plantation owners did not consider this satisfactory, so they turned their attention to breeding. This meant that they had to up the numbers of young women that they were buying, in anticipation of the abolition. The owners had to increase the number of pregnancies and decrease the number of infant mortalities if they could. Young white men, working on the plantations, were positively encouraged to sleep with black women. It is unlikely that the women had much choice in the matter. Sir Adam is very interested in the number of pregnancies at Rozelle at the start of the C19th. It was to him a simple business matter. If his property had children, those children were also his property.
There was one difficulty. Some of the men became very fond of their concubines and children, and bought their freedom. Some even brought them back to Scotland. It was not a simple business matter, and it had repercussion that are with us to this day.
The point of the boom is that there is an intimate and intricate link between Scotland and the Caribbean through slavery. We know from the University College London database of the compensation received from the loss of slaves that Scotland received a level of compensation that was considerably in excess of its population at the time, as we can compare the amount allocated with the 1831 Census figures. This is something that we, in Scotland, can ignore, that we may want to ignore but it would be very wrong to do so. We need to find a solution.

[Rosamund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtful, empassioned and carefully researched. Renton struggles a little with how to avoid being the self-obsessed white liberal.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."

An amazing book looking at the legacy of Britain's slave colonies, told through the lens of Renton's personal familial attachment of slavery, due to his ancestors owning plantations in Tobago and Jamaica.

Britain has always placed itself as a guiding light in the fight to abolish slavery. But as Renton points out, this was completely false. From the abolition of slavery in British colonies only being enforced in 1838 to the 'gradual abolition' approach and the brutal and violent responses to any forms of protest, Renton shows the British were never the good guys they paint themselves to be.

Renton pushes for reparations and meaningful apologies from all nations involved in the slave trade. Although these actions cannot absolve these nations from guilt, it could start to heal the wounds gained from the slave trade.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking and multi-faceted examination of slavery in the Caribbean, including its ramifications for the descendants of the enslavers and the enslaved.

[Arran Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fascinating deep dive into family history. In a time where statues are coming down, street names are being changed, and conversations about reparations are in the foreground, this book really cleverly tackles the question of private guilt and accountability.

I think that what Renton does in this book is really considerate and, to an extent, groundbreaking. The question of familial culpability is really interesting and I think his journeys to Tobago and Jamaica (where his ancestors managed/owned plantations that used enslaved people) showed how he is trying to come to terms with the dark family history he has uncovered.

I would argue that this book is vital for an understanding of Britain's colonial past as it exists as a good case study of how one family fits into the network of banks, insurance companies, lobbying groups, other family businesses, politics, and the imperial machine in the Georgian and early Victorian eras. This book has created a need for me to research my ancestry and see what skeletons I can pull out of the closets.

[Edmond496 · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a South Australian, I say with no hesitation, the sooner we rename Eyre Peninsula, Lake Eyre, Eyre Creek, Eyre Highway, (basically half the state) the better!!!
Edward Eyre was a fully fledged C$&T!!!!!

This is a vital book ❤️

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good look at one family’s legacy with slavery and wealth that documents what happend historically, gives it context for the time and starts to reflect on what this means and what should be done going forward. Well worth reading, particularly for an exploration of guilt, “normal”, indifference in business and the point at which morals do or do not come into play, slavery’s legacy on the location it took place and the families that profited from it and an exploration of Britain’s idea of itself as better due to abolishment of the slave trade. More connected thinking or ideas could be touched on or even explored in this book and the author could have done research into various forms of state and personal repriations and their impact they would have had on his personal lense of his family history - this is hinted at but sadly not explored, even though one gets the feeling the author has thought on this. Family history.

[DeB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply: WOW! Be prepared to have your concept of European success tilted on its head. British supremacy - the sun never setting on the British empire- was a product of the African slave trade, worse than any nation in the world. The wealthy, elite class who continue to benefit two hundred years after these atrocities hardly acknowledged their part of this terrible history, the attitudes which continue to shape our world and have avoided making reparations. I’m still reeling from Alex Renton’s highly personal, deeply felt “memoir” of the discovery of his family’s involvement with slavery; the result is almost an exposé.

Journalist Alex Renton discovered detailed family financial records and diaries from the 18th century, where his Scottish relations owned along with others, plantations in Tobago and Jamaica. As he researched, the facts of the scope of Scottish and British involvement in the slave trade became astounding. He recounts the histories of his family members, their neighbours, fellow plantation owners, the law keepers of the time at the local areas of his kin, the documents which referred to them, and the sugarcane industry manned by African slaves kidnapped from the African continent. In person, he visits these Tobago and Jamaica locations from old maps and interviews current residents, whose ancestors were slaves.

The USA brought 305,000 Africans to be enslaved; their progeny live, work and vote within its current borders.

“More than 3.75 million people were taken in British ships, largely to British colonies…. 12.5 million people forcibly were removed from Africa between 1514 and 1866.”

With the abolition of the slave trade, countries around the world (Portugal, France, Spain,Switzerland, Latvia, Denmark, Italian states and Russia) pulled up stakes and by and large left the inhabitants in poverty. The wealth accrued from their work never made it back to any of them.

The British government was able to finally convince its slave-owners (wealthy merchants, bankers, factory owners, many highly placed in government or elite royalty and British property owners who had the vote and paid land tax) to agree to abolish slavery through paying them off, an enormous debt on the country which was then further distributed to ALL tax payers until 2015. The history books, however, are congratulatory on the act of abolition- not how it came about and how it made these individuals incredibly rich.

I view “Colonialism” through another set of eyes, too. With slavery abolished, and Britain still hungry for products to fuel its industry and feed its people, other means needed to be considered. After taking Canada over from the French, there was a different opportunity. I know from old stories told to me, that the ideas were that Ukrainian immigration was encouraged for two reasons: their skill with wheat production and the belief that these Slavs would live as British serfs, subjugated to their masters. As the Britons had done where they had colonised previously, the inhabitants (First Nations) of the country were pushed aside - rather than incorporated which had been more of France’s practice in trying to survive the brutal climate. The Ukrainian population wasn’t particularly amenable; the people worked very hard to build lives and unions for workers resulted. The story of First Nations continues… the threads unraveling from the British elite during the 1800’s. I have never looked at this situation as a consequence of rich men lining their pockets further, due to the freed slaves.

I thank Alex Renton for educating me in such a global fashion.

It has taken me a couple of days to digest my feelings…. I feel very angry when I think about the poor indentured Irish, really slaves, who were British fodder… I’ve read that for a time they were preferred because they were cheaper than Africans.

Racism - colourism- however, is the great stain upon the world from these practices.

This book is worthy of everyone’s time.

Five stars.

[John Pepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely devoured this book; I admired so much about it.


I have ready many book, illuminating the ravaging effect of slavery on enslaved people, and I have read general histories of the toll which it took among slaves on Caribbean sugar plantations. However, never have I left a book feeling that I have lived the lives of enslaved people and their overseers and owners in the way the author does in telling this story through generations of his family.



Alex Renton has neatly and, for me, amazingly captured the personal relevance (not only for you, but for me, the reader) that stems from framing the narration through the experienced history of his family. And he has done this while providing the broader context (economic, legal, geopolitical) in which the narrative takes place.



I have rarely, if ever, seen a writer capture so well the mindset of an individual who sees himself, and who seeks to be moral and upstanding, despite being a slave owner. An owner, who in this case, includes graphic, meticulous, day-to-day communications with the plant overseer that clearly depicts his conviction that the slaves are barely human and simply business assets.



This history shed new perspective for me and in other cases sharpened what I had before-- one example being the increasing and unrelenting focus on enslaved women becoming bodies to breed children.

Data is used judiciously to underscore horrendous realities. Just one example:while 2.7 million enslaved people were shipped to the British Caribbean, by 1834, there were only about 800,000 enslaved and about 100,000 freed slaves left.





Reviewers have accorded this book with many superlatives which I would embrace: “unflinching, brave, well-researched.” But if I had to pick one word, it would be humane.



Regarding the research, the book reads like a mystery story pulling data and attitudes from family records and correspondence, and then integrating this with information and quotations from other resources in order to provide a more holistic picture.



I appreciated how Renton conveyed his horror and disgust with what happened without dulling the full telling of the history which would have resulted in the book becoming a polemic.



I liked the summary quote pulled from Sir Geoff Palmer, “You can’t change the past, but you can change its consequences.” That is our responsibility.



This book has led me to see the horror of American slavery through another lens. It is yet another example of how man’s quest for power and tendency to put down some “other” to lift oneself up and gain financial advantage has existed everywhere, and still does today. It also provides ample evidence of how folks can try to justify something in the past based on facile reasoning. The comment made to defend slavery by saying that enslaved people “lived happier than common people in most, if not, any country in Europe” was, of course, exactly what some others were saying about Negroes compared to laborers in the north.


I am drawn to your final words in the book: “The story of transatlantic slavery is not over: we have it in us to change its consequences.” This, indeed, is our responsibility. I hope we are up to it.

[Ken Sampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

[2 Aug 2021] This is a truly remarkable book which is so 'of the moment' that it is a must read. It is in essence a simple story of a family who got into owning a plantation and owning Slaves for a hundred years or so. I experienced it as a book of two parts. When the author introduces the subject and his family he is apologetic, and frankly unable to resist the current white, left-wing, self flagellation of the virtue signalling anti-racist. It wasn't the best start and frankly made me think 'do I need this?' I started to think - hold on a minute - the authors ancestors were rich Scottish landowners who invested in slaves as if they were animals. The sense of 'we are all guilty' is galling. Should we blame all Germans for the Nazis? Should we never forgive all Germans for the Holocaust?

As far as I'm concerned my ancestors lived quietly, self sufficiently, refusing sugar in their tea in good Methodist tradition, never to my knowledge directly or indirectly benefiting from the exploitation of other human beings. I'm not sure how it helps black people today, white people feeling guilty purely because they shared the skin of those who did unforgivable things. So just as I'm starting to think this book will be political correctness personified it moved on to the story of his family. A clear, non-judgemental account of slavery in Tobago and Jamaica. Meticulously researched, characters brought to life, graphic descriptions of real events - the horrific nature of slave ownership all detailed and explored. The very best account of slavery I have ever read. Shocking, painful, awful, unbelievable and horrific in the extreme.

If anyone is unsure about the nature of slavery and the complexity of its consequence then this is the one and only book for them. However the left wing virtue signaller comes back at the end. The duplicitous white Government, the wonderful Black Lives Matters, etc - This book is good history and poor political polemic. One wonders if the author felt compelled to signal his virtue when in fact his virtue was the frank, honest depiction of his horrific family history.

A remarkable must-read book even if we could have done without the 'all white people are racist' stuff.

[MJ Brodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an absorbing and fascinating read as Alex Renton goes through his family archives to trace the history of the profit they made from plantations they owned in the West Indies in the 1700s through to the 1800s. Part of the British social elite for generations, Renton (who himself went to Eton) shows that a good portion of his family's wealth derived from sugar plantations that relied on slave labor. The best thing about this book is that Renton gives a sober, fact-based account of his family's management of the plantation and treatment of their workers, whether paid or enslaved. His thorough research shows how plantation owners were able to distance themselves morally and emotionally from the abuses of the slave plantation system, going on to even get compensation that further enriched them from the British government after the abolition of slavery in 1833.

The details from Renton's family archive and other documents he finds in Jamaica and Trinidad shed light on how slavery could exist alongside ideals of the Enlightenment. It also humanizes slave-owners, showing them to be people who were not villainous caricatures as is typically shown in films like Twelve Years A Slave, but often educated people who found all kinds of ways to justify slavery morally so they could benefit from the system economically. As slavery became increasingly morally questionable into the mid-1800s, these families that benefited from the system most directly were adept at hiding the origins of their wealth and remaining as respectable members of the elite.

What is more shocking about Renton's book is that this same social elite still enjoys immense privilege in Britain today. Some of Britain's wealthiest families and largest banks are direct beneficiaries of slavery but without the work of researchers like Alex Renton the details of that history could easily remain obscured.

[Mur McEwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book. The author's ancestors from the c 1770s to the c 1850s made vast amounts of money as owners of sugar plantations worked by their slaves in the Caribbean. Other landed families made more, much more. Eye watering amounts. From historic papers in the family archives we are taken through the boom and bust times for the family over several generations, accompanied by the slow and gradual evolution of the movement for the abolition of slavery. Portugal seemed to lead in terms of the number of slaves transported from Africa, followed by Britain, France and Spain. Recent research shows many other countries were involved and benefitted from the slave trade eg the shackles & leg irons used were made from Swedish iron. So Sweden is in the mix, though not so directly. Presumably those who rounded up the people in Africa, and initiated their enslavement process, also made huge amounts of money, so are also complicit. This side of things is not covered in the book. Their transportation by slave ships to the Caribbean is touched on pretty briefly.

Towards the end of the book there is talk of present-day descendants of the slaves moving from the Caribbean to Africa (Ghana, Sierra Leone etc) from whence their ancestors were transported. I wonder how practical this might be, and the implications.

The book then closes with discussion about reckoning, atonement, reparations and compensation. There's a proactive Centre for Reparations Research within the University of the West Indies in Jamaica leading research in the call for reparations. From whom all this might come, and in what form, is no doubt the subject of potentially infinite debate and discussion. Meanwhile we learn that c 2.7 million tourists visit Jamaica annually. That'll be a lot of money coming in, albeit probably a drop in the financial ocean of what will be seen in some quarters as adequate "compensation" for historic injustices and crimes committed.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Author, Alex Renton, is descended from a Scots family who owned sugar plantations in Tobago in the 18th century. The family had never discussed this part of their past. When Alex's maternal grandfather was ill and dying, he came across papers he had never known about relating to the plantations. This book is his discovery of his family history, the origins of their wealth and their participation in slavery. The book is a frank expose of the mid-Atlantic slave trade as practiced by the cream of British Society at the time, family names that you will recognize. Mr. Renton casts a sharp light onto the world of slavery in the Carribean, exposing little known facts such as the huge amount of reparations that the British government paid to the slaveholders, not to the slave victims, from the time of the outlawing of slavery, reparations that have been paid until 2015. The author offers no defense for his family's participation in slavery but discusses his feeling of shame and attempts by himself and others to make some restitution to the survivors. This is an important book, but not one that is comfortable to read. I strongly urge you to read this book.

[Julie Doel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an eye-opening book giving great insight into Britain’s role in the slave trade through the author’s exposure of his own ancestors’ involvement. The incidents described are shocking and at times make for hard reading. I find it hard to believe that we humans can be so cruel and sadistic to one another, but sadly this is the case. The book covers racism and shows how many of the issues we see today have their roots in the past. Finally the author suggests some ways we might move forwards. To me, this book is a much more honest account of Britain’s role in slavery rather than the airbrushed version commonly portrayed whereby we ‘gloriously’ abolished the evil trade (without acknowledging our grievous involvement and the enormous wealth we derived from it).

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books looks at one journalist exploring his family links to owning slaves in Jamaica. This is done through exploration of the family archive and other information. It is a useful book to read with
The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery. Blood legacy looks at the history and the legacy of slavery - through the impact of one family seeking to profit from Jamica. It is depressing reading. I found out about this book via the Empire podcast.

[Roopa Prabhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet again a book I discovered after listening to the Empire Podcast by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. I am so glad I picked it up, the book has educated me on slavery and its history. How it physically and mentally impacted whole generations. Horrified to know to what extend human beings can be monsters to fellow human beings. How delusion, propaganda, greed and politics can perpetuate a crime even after knowing the facts.
This book grows on you, one needs to be patient initially as it’s not clear right away as to where the book is going. Thank you and a reminder of what we are capable of when there is no morale compass, no sense of justice and no compassion.

[Cassie W · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a well written and eye-opening, personal exploration of slavery. Going through old family letters, Alex Renton uncovers his horrifying (although not uncommon) family history - his Scottish ancestors and their plantation in Jamaica and the many enslaved people that worked their plantation.
I learned so much from this book, would highly recommend. A helpful history to consider in present day - what is our collective responsibility today and the responsibility of various nation states in the light of the damage caused by the slave trade?

[Dominique · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting book, going through a detailed and vivid account of the author's ancestors' role in slavery in the Carribbean. I unfortunately was a bit disappointed with the "reckoning" portion of the book. As this is the subtitle of the book, I expected less about the details of history and more about the challenges of what happens next (which the author starts discussing in the last two chapters only).

[Bethan Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omg finally finished this one! It was undoubtedly very interesting and well researched, loads of info and an interesting perspective. So it’s getting a 4 stars for learning new stuff. I will say though that I would have liked more analysis throughout. The end about the compensation slave owners received and then the section on reparations were the best bits and they were pretty short. I feel like these arguments could have been throughout the whole book/had a bit more focus

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story about his family's slave owning plantations in the Caribbean told alongside Britain's involvement in the slave trade. More importantly and illuminating is what happened to the freed slaves in Jamaica after emancipation and the toxic legacy those in power left behind. This is all new to me and it certainly has been hidden from the mainstream view. Lots to think about.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is quietly enthralling - a fascinating historical and personal journey at once. Deeply researched, articulate, and sensitive, it unearths shameful practices that were 'normal' in their day but must be reckoned with now. Renton doesn't shy away from the difficult truths of slavery and colonialism. Brave work.

[Mrs Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting as a Scot I had an idea that landed gentry had made huge gains from the trade in humans. It all seems so appalling now and I was gobsmacked to discover how much the slave trade benefited everyone in the UK at huge coast to people enslaved and treated so poorly. A real eye opener of a book, well written and educational. I’d highly recommend reading it.

[Diana Laffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes you deep into the history of slavery through the stories of traders, proprietors and the enslaved themselves. I found the description of what happened post ‘emancipation’ very shocking, removing forever any sense that the British practised fair play. Some parts were a little unbalanced and polemical for me but a very enlightening read.

[Jennifer Trimble · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amount of research that went into this book was incredible. The author’s ancestors profited from Slavery through plantations in the Caribbean. They left behind a ton of records, over 100 years of letters, ledgers,etc. The author fully denounced his ancestors. He didn’t flinch from sharing the terrible treatment/neglect committed.

[Crispin Rose-Innes · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intense look at the horror of our slaving past

[Judith Bowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

We need more of this way of thinking and certain people usually with multi hyphenated names should be forced to read it..out loud and then eat the book as a start

[Emma Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional book. I hope it makes it to the national curriculum soon. I learned ALOT.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkably detailed account of the family's slave-owning past, but then disappointingly brief at the end with how the family is coming to terms with this legacy. Well worth a read.