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 build...and which he defended right up until the last
weak scratches of his pen.
