Heiresses

Marriage, Inheritance, and Slavery in the Caribbean

Miranda Kaufmann

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.

Miranda Kaufmann is 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 was "A Book of the Year" for the Evening Standard and the Observer. She has appeared on Sky News, the BBC and Al Jazeera, and she’s written for The Times, Guardian and BBC History Magazine. She lives in North Wales.

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Endorsements & Reviews

“This robust chronicle excavates the lives of nine female British enslavers. These female enslavers were just as callous as their male counterparts, Kaufmann diligently shows. Her research is impressive; she frequently leaves her subjects behind in their mansions to dive into the history of slavery in the West Indies, and spends ample time delineating the stories of enslaved people and their relationships to these heiresses. Serious students of history will learn much.” Publishers Weekly

"Kaufmann provides a compelling account of the lives of nine heiresses. Kaufmann tracks not only the heiresses’ lives but also the lives of the enslaved people they owned, how their plantations traded hands, and their influences on Caribbean enslavement culture. She brings life to each story by crafting a linear narrative with rich background information. A comprehensive and gripping examination of the fortunes, lives, and influences of nine women within the Caribbean enslavement economy." Library Journal

“A fresh perspective on Britain’s involvement in slavery through the lives of nine 18th-century women who accrued large fortunes in the empire’s Caribbean colonies and, by virtue of their wealth, became sought-after wives by men of all classes. A meticulously researched history.” Kirkus Reviews

“A sobering and significant achievement. This is a book you need to read.”

Lucy Worsley, bestselling author, historian, and TV host of Lucy Worsley Investigates

"An impeccably researched and penetrating new history of the transatlantic slavery system, revealing the role of heiresses in bringing slavery wealth to British society. Forensic, rigorous and deeply ethical, the book is written in flawless prose. Kaufmann's revelatory chapter on Jane Austen alone entirely redefines a favoured author's relationship with slavery and abolition." Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain

“From unscrupulous fortune-hunters to pillars of the gentry, grasping merchants to international royalty, Heiresses takes us on a breath-taking tour of the eighteenth-century social world. It shows us, dramatically and undeniably, that women as well as men played a foundational part in the gruesome industry of transatlantic enslavement, and that the profits they garnered laced together almost every part of Georgian Britain and its empire. Powerfully written and scrupulously researched, Miranda Kaufmann's new book is a standing rebuke to those who would deny the facts of history, simply because they challenge an invented national self-image.” David Andress, author of The Savage Storm and The Terror

"Vivid, shocking and compulsively readable: these stories of greed, lust and betrayal, all driven by a ruling elite that was racist and misogynist to its core, are so important as we seek an honest reckoning with Britain's colonial history.
Miranda Kaufmann is not just a fine investigative historian –– she is a superb storyteller." Alex Renton, author of Blood Legacy

“This marvelously written tale of nine heiresses forging their thoroughly absorbing lives with money from slavery gives us an entirely fresh insight into Georgian and Victorian Britain, but more importantly it is also a triumph of reparative history.” Alan Lester, British historical geographer and author of Ruling the World

Praise for Black Tudors

"This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth." David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History