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Drax of Drax Hall
How One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery
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Brief Description
While the British landed gentry were to profit from chattel slavery in the West Indies, the Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax family of Dorset pioneered it. Spanning 400 years and 18 generations, Drax of Drax Hall is a story that has never been told. It all started when James Drax,...
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Drax of Drax Hall
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An unbroken British bloodline of slavery, exploitation, and unrepentance
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Description
While the British landed gentry were to profit from chattel slavery in the West Indies, the Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax family of Dorset pioneered it.
Spanning 400 years and 18 generations, Drax of Drax Hall is a story that has never been told. It all started when James Drax, one of the first settlers in Barbados in 1627, effectively founded the British sugar industry. His descendants went on to write the book on how to run a slave plantation. For more than two hundred years, the family enslaved up to 330 people at any time and became enormously rich.
Today, the bloodline is unbroken, and former Tory MP Richard Drax heads the family from his vast Charborough Estate in Dorset. With physical assets worth at least £150m—not to mention the 621-acre sugar plantation in Barbados, the Drax Hall Estate—he was the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons. Unseated in 2024, he remains a hero amongst hard-right culture warriors for his refusal to make any reparations for his family's role in slavery.
Drax of Drax Hall is a history that lifts the lid on this grotesque family. Through enclosure at home and enslavement abroad, their exploits expose the ugly realities of colonialism and empire—the legacies of which we have yet to fully confront today.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780745350516
Publisher: Pluto Press
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 20 March 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Pluto Press
Illustration: 3 Charts; 7 Figures; 16 Plates, color
Contributors:
- Foreword by David Olusoga
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 234.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 448
About the Author
Paul Lashmar is Reader in Journalism at City St George's, University of London. He has taken an interest in the history of slavery since he developed a Channel 4 series on Britain's slave trade in 1999. He has been an investigative journalist in television and print, and on the staff of The Observer, Granada Television's World in Action current affairs series and The Independent. He is the author, co-author or co-editor of six books. He lives in Dorset. David Adetayo Olusoga OBE is a British-Nigerian historian, writer, broadcaster and BAFTA-winning film-maker.
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