In a sense, this has also been this country’s experience of slavery, something that took place long ago and far away. One answer is that, as Fergusson never set foot in the West Indies, let alone on his plantations, the appalling reality of slavery was something that could remain safely abstract, consigned to some distant universe in which human suffering didn’t register. This is the question, in one form or another, which recurs throughout this compelling narrative. In assessing this blandly sinister primary source, Renton asks how someone who took an intellectual interest in progressive debates could also methodically approve of collars, handcuffs and chains used to bind and torment innocent human beings. And he ran the family’s slave plantations in Tobago and Jamaica for almost 50 years.įergusson was also a meticulous keeper of accounts, which survive largely intact. He was thought of as a well-educated and highly cultured man. Sir Adam Fergusson was an 18th-century lawyer, MP and someone who knew many of the key figures in the Scottish enlightenment. The Fergussons of Kilkerran, of whom Renton is a direct descendant, were powerful members of the landed gentry. James Graham (1789-1860), Alex Renton’s fourth great-grandfather, who owned two slaves.
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