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Blood Legacy

Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery

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Blood Legacy

By: Alex Renton
Narrated by: Alex Renton
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About this listen

Through the story of his own family's history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The ancestors of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today.

A group of Caribbean countries are suing 10 European nations for a total of four trillion dollars for the damage inflicted on them. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter and other activists groups are causing increasing numbers of white people to reflect on how this history of abuse and exploitation has benefited them.

Blood Legacy explores what inheritance - political, economic, moral and spiritual - has been passed to the descendants of the slave owners and the descendants of the enslaved. He also asks, crucially, how the former - himself among them - can begin to make reparations for the past.

©2021 Alex Renton (P)2021 Canongate Books Ltd Civilization World Caribbean Imperialism

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All stars
Most relevant  
Yes. We needed an honest perspective from a white descendant of plantation slavery. This is it!

We needed this book

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A well read and honest historical account of West Indian sugar plantation slavery from a Scottish families contribution and also the role played by some other British and European slave owners.

Highly recommended

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Blood Legacy offers a fascinating perspective on the horrific and difficult history of slavery, and its legacy. Looking at it from the author’s family’s relationship with plantations in both Tobago and Jamaica grants a personal view alongside a well researched historical one. It results in a thoroughly engaging account of how slavery operated, both in the Caribbean and in the UK.

A refreshingly new angle on a gruesome history

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Gave me an insight into the complexity of the ramifications of the British slave trade and made me realise the importance of agitating to ensure that money is invested in welfare education and training etc to try and redress the drain on the countries and communities of the descendants of the enslaved.

Fascinating & Important

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I’ll write a longer review when I can but this is just to say that I found this book excellent and highly recommended it to all. It’s not an easy listen. But it’s vital that the global North begins to reflect on the legacy of our ancestors plundering of the wealth, culture and people of the South. Our collective sanity depends on it. Alex has done a great service and opens a wider conversation about reparations and healing. I hope this is widely discussed and action taken by individuals (I will act to do what I can) and governments.

Searingly vivid and important account

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I know nothing of the history of the British slave trade except that William Wilberforce campaigned for it to to be abolished and eventually won that argument. Hooray - Brits are good yah! Except I had no idea what the British slave trade involved. And talking to my children who have all studied history to GCSE they don’t even know about William Wilberforce. Guess we have the white wealthy ruling elite to thank for that; Michael Gove as education secretary reorganised the national curriculum so our dirty washing is not on show any more.

Alex Renton is a descendant of one of the families that profited from the British slave trade, the Fergusons of Scotland. Eton educated and recognising that his privilege has come from the plantation wealth that dribbled down through generations he is brave enough to face his family’s past rather than do the easier thing of just ignoring it.

Amazingly his ancestors kept records of their plantation business: accounts and letters had been kept by a particularly dedicated accountant-type forbear and his grandfather (an archivist) had carefully logged and filed them many years later. Renton has taken up that cudgel upon finding the family records and has produced an astonishing book detailing his family’s history in slave trading in first Tobago and then in Jamaica. At times it is a painful read - the brutality of slave owners / planters reminded me of Lord of The Flies - how men behave when no authority rules them (distance from the UK allowed this). Slaves were listed in financial accounts along with other business assets such as horses and cattle. Horrific. Renton has done extraordinary research into this subject widening the story out into how slaves were treated, the accepted rape of slave women by white owners and workers and has brought the story right up to date with how Jamaica continues to suffer today due to Britain still not accepting that whilst planters were paid what today would be millions of pounds compensation for the loss of their plantation businesses when abolition occurred, NOTHING was paid to those who were taken from their lands and treated as sub human. The echoes of that still reverberate today. But Renton puts his money where his mouth is and continues to campaign against the prejudice against black people that permeates our society as, he argues, a direct result of our shameful past. This book should be read by everyone. It’s a superb well-written story that stands on its own and the author does a good job of narrating it. Highly recommend.

A Must-Read Book for Everyone

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I was thankfully recommended to read this by a friend.
This is a remarkable book. I studied history and am Irish so always held the torch for nations who also suffered under colonialism.
On reading this book I found an embarrassing gap in my education, a gaping void where the realities of European slave trade has been glossed over. I even did a course on European imperialism - tons of facts about exploration, very light on exploitation detail.

The authors voice throughout of unashamedly bringing facts of his ancestors contribution should be one heard more often.
As relevant institutions ought to (and are beginning to) address and label historical contribution to enslaving human beings, so too should archives be opened and mined for tangible primary sources.

This book relays letters written by plantation owners living half a world away, and how attitudes changed over 200 years.

I very much recommend.

A must read

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A very thoughtful reflection on the impact of slavery. Also had a lot of detailed description of the period.

Honest and wide ranging

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This ought to have been an interesting account but too weighed down with tedium of facts and not enough time allowing the feelings to resonate

Unfulfilled potential

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