This book isn't the conclusion of a scheme of research - it's the first step. The subjection isn't compensation but the compensated. When the British Parliament finally set about doing for the Caribbean and other enslaved its subjects claimed as property it had to accept that it was depriving them of valuable chattels - compensation was therefore provided. The records of the process tell us who claimed and who for, and how much they were paid. They were also, of course allowed to continue using the paid labour of their former chattels for a statutory period. The surviving documents tell us who they were and the circumstances of their claims. Until Nick Draper did the work, we didn't know. The work is still going on - much more has turned up since the book was published and a good deal of it can be found online at LBSUCL, where you can, for example, find a little more about one of the many slaveowners Nick Draper brought to light - Anna Maria Fraser, whose entire worldly wealth was, she thought, bound up in one Guyanan slave on the other side of the Atlantic - and which she feared she would not be able to claim in the proper form because she could not afford stamped paper. She lived until the 1890s. There are Invernessians alive today whose grandparents knew her. For most of their and their parent's and grandparents lives, the role their own kin had played in the slave economy was forgotten - not just never mentioned, but forgotten. Not just Invernessians -Welsh, Irish and English as well are waking up the reality of their nation's slave past because of this and other such books. What it offers is a snapshot of a single process in that involved story - of course many more famous owners aren't mentioned because by the time of emancipation they had sold out. Individuals, partnerships, banks and landowners who never set foot on a slave island rub shoulders in its pages. What is important about this book is that its rests on panstaking documentary analysis. It's conclusions may seem provisional and unimpressinve, but they are solid. The arguments about the Williams thesis aren't settled but they are placed in a new context.
This is an important work of English history and long, long overdue.
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