Summary Of Andrea Stuart's Sugar In The Blood?

The book Sugar in the Blood was written by Andrea Stuart recalling the migration of her family from Britain to Barbados and their establishment as owners of their sugar cane plantation. Early on in the book, when recalling her most distant maternal relative, George Ashby’s, departure from his life as a blacksmith in England to the unknown “New World” Stuart states, “The why of George Ashby’s departure is something I will never know;” (10). She then goes on to make an inference based on prior research that he may have been lured by the “positive pull of the opportunities represented by the New World” (10). This paragraph is a great example of how the overall book is constructed. It is generally made up of research on Stuart’s genealogy and then

Issues of rape and abuse were very prevealant throughout the plantations during colonial times and these were highlighted in the book. This was highlighted when Stuart pointed out “In the colonies, a white man could do things that he could do virtually nowhere else” (184). Stuart goes into more detail by saying “If he had a sadistic streak he could indulge it here with impunity; if he wished to rape, or beat, or sodomize a black man, woman, or child there was little anyone could do or would do to stop him” (184). This was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to describing white man’s interactions with slaves in the colonial era. Robert Cooper Ashby, a descendent of George Ashby, who eventually took over the plantation ended up having four children with one of his slaves by the same of Sukey Ann despite having a wife, Mary Burke. Stuart suggested that Robert Cooper felt a sense of compassion towards Sukey Ann and her four children because, “In 1832, Robert Cooper decided to grant freedom to one of his slave families: Sukey Ann and her four kids. This was an interesting decision on his part, since full emancipation was now likely and there was a certain cachet to

The aforementioned topics of establishment in the New World and treatment of slaves on plantations were recurring throughout the book. The book did a good job illustrating why Caribbean countries like Barbados were central in the triangular trade between England, the West Indies, and America commonly comes up in middle school history classes. One of the hard to believe aspects of the book is the idea that merchants seemed to stumble into their fortune and were only where they were due to the work done by the slaves from before sun rise to after sun