Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract: The Story of a Tangled Inheritance

Product Information

The author's namesake is some mover and shaker whether it be Government contracts to supply the redcoats battling George Washington with rum one of the much needed supplies or domestic political shenanigans battling Fox and co.

I would compare this to Mank the film which at over two hours is rather imposing but if you battle through the first 20 minutes of the latter, so say first 30 odd pages of this tome, you are set fair and onto a damn good thing. It provided insights into the enslaved people's environment, the British abolition campaign, and what happened when the system ended. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. He is also the five-times great-uncle of the Richard Atkinson who produced this fascinating, exhaustive work of family history. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.very well written story of the rise of the Richard Atkinson and then the demise of the great fortune he made - as well as a good tale, it is also a portrait of the country at a time of massive change with lots of familiar characters. 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; 40 years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy. Of course a lot of the history most people will know, but what is so interesting is the way well known events interact with the family and the way Atkinson managed to be if not at the centre of major events at least close by and talking to all the people who were.

From the first page you are hooked - both by the link between these two relatives and the extraordinary details of the life led by the earlier historical man. the subject matter is Georgian-era merchants (an ancestor of the author in particular), early merchant banks, the War of American Independence, slavery, trade, war with France, sugar, slavery, trade, abolition. Richard “Rum” Atkinson was an 18th-century adventurer of the kind you might find in a picaresque novel. Unable to have a family of his own, he threw in his lot with the one he already had, and duly discovered a Dickensian array of characters: litigious eccentrics, bone-idle fops, dutiful husbands and angelic nieces, all enjoying the profits of slavery.Although there was much too much detailed political scene setting for the Richard Atkinson with the rum contract. Drawing on his ancestors’ private correspondence, Richard Atkinson pieces together their unsettling story, from the weather-beaten house in Cumbria where they once lived to the ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica.

When she eventually married, aged 43, Anne went with her much younger husband to live in South Africa. Atkinson’s attempt to trace his family back through several centuries of British history is fascinating, if overlong and occasionally bogged down in details of eighteenth-century scams. It is a journey through British and colonial history, told with incredible and vivid detail, but also the moving and fascinating history of a family. The youngest son in a line of Westmorland tanners, he became a merchant and profiteer, a director of the East India Company, an MP, an Alderman of the City of London, a disappointed lover, a slave owner, and the posthumous initiator of the most almighty family feud.

From the author's own investigations into his family history, to getting a new and absolutely unique perspective on history (the American revolution and slavery in particular) I was thrilled. Overall I found this book a thought provoking and important addition to my understanding of 18th century Britain and our involvement with slavery and the abolition of what we all now understand was a despicable trade. New Paperbacks NEW PAPERBACKS [jsb_filter_by_tags count="15" show_more="10" sort_by="total_products"/] A selection of recent paperbacks. 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.