Heiresses

Marriage, Inheritance, and Slavery in the Caribbean

Miranda Kaufmann

From Jamaica to Charleston, Sierra Leone to Bombay, China to Australia, back to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 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

“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

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

"Splendid. A cracking contribution to the field."

Dan Jones, The Sunday Times

"Enlightening and constantly surprising. Far too many popular studies of the Tudors return the same faces. To its great credit, Black Tudors presents fresh figures and challenges the way we look at them."

Jessie Childs, The Financial Times

"Consistently fascinating, historically invaluable… the narrative is pacy... Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in the same light again." The Daily Mail

"That rare thing: a book about the 16th century that said something new." Evening Standard, Books of the Year