Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance, and Slavery in the Caribbean

From Jamaica to Charleston, Sierra Leone to India, Australia and back to England, 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 to find himself a Caribbean heiress. Their assets, the product of the exploitation of enslaved African men, women, and children, enabled them to marry into the top tiers of the aristo...