Sources and resources
The principal archive used in Blood Legacy is the Fergusson of Kilkerran papers, catalogued by the National Records of Scotland as NRAS 3572. It remains privately owned but can be accessed by application. For more information on this archive or other information on sources please contact the NRS or Alex Renton
A bibliography appears in the book. Among the online free sources used are:
University College London, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership Details of owners of plantations and enslaved people, drawn first from the 1833-1836 records of the 46,000 people who applied for or were granted compensation at the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean. Continually expanding and a brilliant, searchable resource. www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs
Slave Voyages A ‘digital memorial’ to the millions of Africans forced to cross the Atlantic as slaves, and then transported within the Americas. Documentation, archive, maps and animations reveal huge amounts about the journeys of the 12.5 million people enslaved and sold between 1525 and 1866. www.slavevoyages.org
Report of the Jamaica Royal Commission, parts one & two The vivid testimony from the perpetrators and hundreds of the victims of the Morant Bay War and reprisals in 1865 are collected in one of the most extraordinary documents of the British colonial era. It can be found in its entirety, and searched, on Google Books.
For more on the campaign to begin discussion of reparations for the people and nations affected by transatlantic slavery and its legacy, see the Caricom Reparations Commission. caricomreparations.org
Key texts
These books and websites have been particularly important in my education about this history
Transatlantic and plantation enslavement
Beckles, Hilary McD. and Verene Shepherd. Liberties Lost: The Indigenous Caribbean and Slave Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
Burnard, Trevor. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004 – and many other papers and essays.
Donington, Katie. The Bonds of Family: Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British Atlantic World. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019
James, Marlon. The Book of Night Women. London: One World, 2009 (fiction)
Parker, Matthew. The Sugar Barons. London: Hutchinson, 2011
Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2005 (first published 1944)
Emancipation and the legacy of British slavery
Draper, Nicholas. The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010
Hall, Catherine et al. Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014
Hickling, Frederick W. Owning Our Madness: Facing Reality in Post- colonial Jamaica. Jamaica: Caribbean Institute of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, UWI, 2016
Olusoga, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. London: Pan Books, 2017
Palmer, Geoff. The Enlightenment Abolished: Citizens of Britishness. Scotland: Henry Publishing, 2007
Jamaica’s history
Anonymous, Marly: Or, a Planter’s Life in Jamaica. Glasgow: Griffin & Co., 1828 (fiction)
Craton, Michael. Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978
Hutton, Clinton A., Colour for Colour, Skin for Skin: Marching with the Ancestral Spirits into War Oh at Morant Bay. Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2015
Paton, Diana. No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation 1780–1870. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004
Petley, Christer. White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018 (On the planter Simon Taylor)
Thomson, Ian. The Dead Yard: A Story of Modern Jamaica, London: Faber, 2009 (History and travelogue of modern Jamaica)
Turner, Sasha. Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childbearing and Slavery in Jamaica. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 2017
Scotland’s history
Devine, T. M. (ed.) Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015
electricscotland.com - a vast archive on the history of Scotland, notable people and the Scottish diaspora
Fergusson, Sir James. Lowland Lairds. London: Faber, 1949
Graham, Eric. Burns & the Sugar Plantocracy of Ayrshire. Edinburgh: MDPD, 2014
Whyte, Iain. Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery 1756–1838. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006
Trinidad and Tobago’s history
Archibald, Douglas. Tobago, ‘Melancholy Isle’. Trinidad: Westindiana Books, 1987
Craig-James, Susan E. The Changing Society of Tobago 1838–1938 (two volumes). Stevens Point, WI: Cornerstone Press, 2008
Phillips, David. La Magdalena: The Story of Tobago 1498 to 1898. iUniverse, 2004