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S. D. Smith. Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834 .:Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834. (Cambridge Studies in Economic History.)

2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 113; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/ahr.113.2.459

1937-5239

James M. Rosenheim,

Historical Economic and Social Studies

S. D. Smith's wise investigation of three generations of the Lascelles family, later barons and then earls of Harewood, presents an unusual and salutary perspective on the history of both the English landed elite and the British Atlantic world over two centuries. In some ways this is the history of a Yorkshire gentry family that prospered as merchants and then as owners of sugar plantations in the West Indies from mid-seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, but the book is also much more, not least because of its pertinence for twenty-first century concerns, reflected in the attention that the Harewood Trust (holder of much of the evidence on which the book rests) has recently directed to its namesakes' past connections with slavery. Although the study is preoccupied with the Lascelles, others figure substantially in it: the Lascelles' kin in Yorkshire, their business associates around the Atlantic, their West Indian employees, and the slaves laboring on their plantations. At once a contribution to the history of sugar, an illustration of the role of office and patronage in the advancement of economic interests, and an appreciation of managerial practice in British capitalism's growth, Smith's book is also “part of an ongoing re-evaluation of slavery's legacy” (p. 3). In this context, the author brings to light the profound entanglement with slavery from which the Lascelles dramatically profited. He does so from beginning to end, commencing with an account of two British North American merchant families—neither of them the Lascelles—who exemplify his argument that “the exploits of .… gentry capitalists brought into being a business empire of great complexity, built on slavery and patronage” (p. 42).