Britain's female slaveowners: the heiresses who made fortunes from enslavement

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Women's role as slave owners is often overlooked, but just like men, they both profited from and maintained the institution of slavery. In her new book Heiresses, historian Miranda Kaufman profiles nine women who married into the British aristocracy, bringing huge wealth generated from Caribbean slavery into the country. I spoke to Miranda to find out more.

Thanks so much for joining me, Miranda, to talk about your new book, Heiresses. So in the book you look at the stories of nine wealthy women whose fortunes came from slavery. So what drew you to the subject of women who profited from enslaving people? So it all went back to when I was commissioned by English Heritage back in 2006 to investigate links between their properties and enslavement and also in abolition. And I spoke to some of the leading scholars at the time.

I was still a PhD student. I spoke to Madge Dresser and James Wolvin, who were amazing titans of British enslavement history. And they identified sort of about 10 different ways that a country house might be connected to enslavement for me to investigate. And that ranged from people owning plantations and people or investing in transatlantic trade, but also being merchants of produce like sugar or tobacco, or even with the abolition of some of the men who owned these houses were involved in the parliamentary debates, or at Kenwood, Lord Mansfield, was the judge at some of the main court cases regarding the status of Africans in Britain. But the one category that stood out was this category of heiresses.

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