Family Corruption, Empire & War in the West Indies Date of
publication: February 2012 Publisher: Random House The
contemporary image of the West Indies as paradise islands
conceals a turbulent, dramatic and shocking history. For 200
years after 1650, the West Indies witnessed one of the greatest
power struggles of the age, as Europeans made and lost immense
fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative
that it was known as white gold. This compelling book tells how
the islands became by far most valuable and important colonies
in the British Empire; how Barbados, scene of the sugar
revolution that made the English a nation of voracious
consumers, was transformed from a backward outpost into
England's richest colony, powered by the human misery of tens of
thousands of enslaved Africans; how this model of coercion and
exploitation was exported around the region, producing huge
wealth for a few, but creating a society poisoned by war,
disease, cruelty and corruption; how Jamaican opulence reac