Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834. Cambridge Studies in Economic History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. 380. $99.00 (cloth).

Smith S. D.. Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834. Cambridge Studies in Economic History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. 380. $99.00 (cloth).

As early as 1648, the arrival of Edward Lascelles on Barbados initiated a financial legacy for his family. In this book, S. D. Smith sets out to examine commercial connections within the British Empire. He presents a microhistory, exploring the success or failure of some British families. Smith traces the ability of these families and their descendants to acquire or squander their life savings by possessing commission houses in England, owning commercial vessels, obtaining government contracts, lending money (primarily to persons on Barbados), owning plantations in the Americas, but also buying, selling, and owning enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade, along with other commercial ventures. Smith makes a strong case in illustrating the diversified economic portfolio of these families living or in some cases connected to trade in the Americas.

Smith's objectives are clear: first to present a new framework for business association, showing us how mercantile families established themselves in the British Atlantic world in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Second, he argues that the control of complex credit networks was key to success or failure in this commerce. Finally, he maintains that “instruments of control” laid...