Heiresses
Autor Miranda Kaufmannen Limba Engleză Paperback – 3 sep 2026
Descoperim în Heiresses o perspectivă tăioasă asupra istoriei britanice, care deconstruiește imaginea idilică, de inspirație Jane Austen, a societății georgiene. Miranda Kaufmann se concentrează pe o temă centrală adesea omisă: rolul crucial al moștenitoarelor din Caraibe în consolidarea aristocrației engleze. Aceste femei, deținătoare de averi imense acumulate prin exploatarea sclavilor din Jamaica până în Carolina de Sud, nu au fost simple figuri pasive, ci agenți economici care au finanțat politica, arta și înalta societate a vremii. Subliniem modul în care autoarea reușește să scoată la lumină nu doar dramele personale ale moștenitoarelor — de la divorțuri scandaloase la fantezii despre moarte — ci și poveștile celor a căror muncă forțată a făcut posibile aceste destine. Volumul publicat de Pegasusbooks funcționează ca o investigație istorică riguroasă, documentând cum profiturile din sclavie s-au infiltrat în structura fundamentală a Marii Britanii. Comparabil cu Legacies of British Slave-Ownership de Catherine Hall în rigurozitate, Heiresses este actualizat pentru o înțelegere mai nuanțată a intersecției dintre gen, clasă socială și colonialism. Dacă în Women of Fortune accentul cade pe drepturile legale ale moștenitoarelor, lucrarea lui Miranda Kaufmann aduce un plus de profunzime morală prin evidențierea costului uman ascuns în spatele fiecărei dote. Este o lectură densă, de peste 500 de pagini, care recontextualizează bogăția imperiului dintr-o perspectivă critică și necesară.
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 1836432356
Pagini: 544
Dimensiuni: 130 x 198 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.53 kg
Editura: Oneworld Publications
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De ce să citești această carte
Recomandăm această carte cititorilor pasionați de istorie socială care doresc să privească dincolo de balurile epocii georgiene. Veți câștiga o înțelegere clară a modului în care sclavia a finanțat indirect cultura și politica britanică. Este o lucrare esențială pentru a înțelege cum averile coloniale au modelat peisajul social și economic al Angliei moderne, oferind o voce celor ignorați de istoria oficială.
Descriere scurtă
Meet the heiresses.
Their dresses are the latest fashion, their rooms Mayfair's most luxurious, their suitors Britain's most powerful men.
Their fortunes - blood and sugar.
'This is a book you need to read.' Lucy Worsley
Georgian heiresses are inescapable in British culture. They flutter through Jane Austen's novels and countless period dramas. Their portraits - painted by Gainsborough, Zoffany, Reynolds - crowd our museums while their lavish estates pepper the countryside. However, a less genteel story lurks beneath the veneer - those glorious balls, dresses and dowries were funded by the exploitation of enslaved men, women and children.
Following the lives of nine heiresses and tracing their tainted money from its origins in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, Miranda Kaufmann reveals a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting and human exploitation. From Jane Leigh Perrot, Jane Austen's light-fingered aunt, to Elizabeth Vassall Fox, who faked her daughter's death to maintain custody during a tumultuous divorce, Heiressestraces the often scandalous lives of the women who helped build Britain's empire.
Kaufmann also pieces together the lives of the people these heiresses and their families enslaved. There's Betsy Newton, who escaped from Barbados to London to confront her enslavers face-to-face. Meanwhile in Jamaica, Susanna Augier became a powerful landowner, inheriting her white father's properties. Her daughter, an eligible heiress, would marry into the British aristocracy.
Enlightening, provocative and masterfully researched, Heiresses offers a vital history of enslavement in Britain and the Caribbean.
***
'A startling insight into the lives of the real "Mrs Rochesters". The role of women in plantation slavery, as perpetrators and victims is uncovered by a historian at the height of her powers.' Anita Anand, author ofThe Patient Assassinand co-host ofEmpire
'A perfect balance of critical humour and searing historical insight. A must-read.' Paterson Joseph, actor and author ofThe Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
'Vivid, shocking and compulsively readable... Miranda Kaufmann is not just a fine investigative historian - she is a superb story-teller.' Alex Renton, author ofBlood Legacy
Notă biografică
Miranda Kaufmannis a Senior Research Fellow at the University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Her first book, Black Tudors, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 and a Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer. She has appeared on Sky News, the BBC and Al Jazeera, and written forThe Times,GuardianandBBC History Magazine. She lives in North Wales.
Descriere
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 aristocracy and influence society and politics. They fell in love (not always with their husbands), eloped, divorced, squandered fortunes, commissioned art, threw parties, went mad and (in once case) faked a daughter’s death. In her much anticipated follow up to Black Tudors, Miranda Kaufmann peers beneath our pastel-hued, Jane Austen inspired image of the Georgian heiress to reveal a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting and human exploitation. She also unearths the stories of the people the heiresses enslaved, whose labor funded their lifestyles with whom their fates were intimately intertwined. Heiresses provides a compelling and often shocking account of how Britain profited and continues to profit from enslavement. In the vein of landmark books such as Empireland, Natives, They Were Her Property, and White Debt, Heiresses promises to expand and challenge our understanding of history.