Introduction : 'hot as hell, and as wicked as the devil' -- pt. 1. The pioneers. White gold, 1642 -- The first settlements, 1605-41 -- The sugar revolution : 'so noble an undertaking' -- The sugar revolution : 'most inhuman and barbarous persons' -- The plantation : masters and slaves -- The English Civil War in Barbados -- The plantation : life and death -- Cromwell's 'western design' : disaster in Hispaniola -- The invasion of Jamaica -- pt. 2. The grandees. The restoration -- Expansion, war and the rise of the Beckfords -- 'All slaves are enemies' -- The cousins Henry Drax and Christopher Codrington -- God's vengeance -- The planter at war : Codrington in the Leeward islands -- The French invasion of Jamaica -- Codrington the younger in the West Indies -- The murder of Daniel Parke -- The Beckfords : the next generation -- Piracy and rum -- The Maroon War in Jamaica and the War of Jenkins's Ear -- Barbados, the 'civilised isle' -- Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica : 'tonight very lonely and melancholy again' -- Jamaica : rich and poor -- The sugar lobby -- pt. 3. The inheritors. Luxury and debt -- The war against America -- The West Indian 'nabobs' : absenteeism, decadence and decline -- Peace and freedom -- Epilogue : the sins of the fathers.
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