Ayrshire Archaeological & Natural History Society

Burns and the Sugar Plantocracy of Ayrshire

Eric J Graham

 

Ayrshire Monographs No. 36 (2009)

ISBN—978 0 9542253 8 4

128 pp, 48 illustrations

£6.00.

 

A detailed and richly-illustrated account of the connection of Robert Burns with the various Ayrshire landed gentry who held sugar plantations in the Caribbean, in particular Jamaica. Many of the younger sons of landed families went to the Caribbean in order to seek their fortunes, often with tragic consequences. If the son survived the ‘White Man’s Grave’, he hoped to return home and set up his own estate back in Ayrshire, paying for the developments from the profits made in the slave plantations.

 

A native of Ayrshire, Dr Eric Graham is an associate of the Scottish Centre for the Diaspora at the University of Edinburgh.