- Publisher: 4th Estate
- Year: 2020
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 512pp
- Illustrated: Yes
- Dimensions: 242x159mm
- Condition: New - Very Good
- Weight: 0.8kg
- ISBN: 9780007509249
- Product code: 533472
- Other conditions available
Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract
The Story of a Tangled Inheritance
Richard Atkinson New Hardback Illustrated
Postscript summary
The chance discovery of a box of old letters prompted Richard Atkinson to research his family’s history. It led him to his ancestor, also called Richard Atkinson, who amassed a fortune supplying the British army during the American War of Independence, and whose early death was followed by a protracted court battle over his inheritance. Disturbingly, it also revealed the family’s involvement in the slave trade. Slightly off-mint
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Full publisher description
Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2021
'Rarely has family history been so vivid' JENNY UGLOW
'An extraordinarily original work' AMANDA FOREMAN
What would you do if you found out that your ancestors were slave owners?
Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded - the age at which his father died - when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard.
This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica.
Richard's searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy.
Drawing on his family's personal correspondence, Richard writes with rare candour about his worldly ancestors and their involvement in the slave trade - for, like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons' wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the lives of enslaved Africans. This vivid tale of a single family, their lives and loves, set against a panoramic backdrop of war, politics and slavery, offers a uniquely intimate insight into one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain's colonial past.
'Rarely has family history been so vivid' JENNY UGLOW
'An extraordinarily original work' AMANDA FOREMAN
What would you do if you found out that your ancestors were slave owners?
Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded - the age at which his father died - when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard.
This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica.
Richard's searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy.
Drawing on his family's personal correspondence, Richard writes with rare candour about his worldly ancestors and their involvement in the slave trade - for, like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons' wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the lives of enslaved Africans. This vivid tale of a single family, their lives and loves, set against a panoramic backdrop of war, politics and slavery, offers a uniquely intimate insight into one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain's colonial past.
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The chance discovery of a box of old letters prompted Richard Atkinson to research his family’s history. It led him to his ancestor, also called Richard Atkinson, who amassed a fortune supplying the British army during the American War of Independence, and whose early death was followed by a protracted court battle over his inheritance. Disturbingly, it also revealed the family’s involvement in the slave trade. <i>Slightly off-mint</i>
Hardback
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Richard Atkinson
General
242x159mm
4th Estate
No
Hardback
Colonialism
