sugarcane industry

In the slums of Martinique, a grandmother risks all to give her grandson a chance at the education that will enable him to escape crushing poverty and the backbreaking work in the cane fields.

Andrea Stuart's maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to Barbados in the late 1630's. There he became a sugar plantation owner by chance and the sudden demand for sugar worldwide made him wealthy. Enslaved black workers did the labor and the sugar trade enriched Europe and financed the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. Sugar also enriched South American enonomies, helped the United States become a world power, and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. Andrea Stuart's family story provides a concrete connection to this time in history and her exploration of the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar, and slavery ties the past to the present.