In his enthusiastic introduction to Paul Lashmar’s Drax of Drax Hall, David Olusoga observes that Britain’s role in slavery was, until recently, a “terra incognita”. While a deeper reckoning seemed to have begun in the past few decades – statues toppled, archives scoured, reparations debated – the global rightward lurch has seen a renewed reluctance to connect past crimes with present privilege. Lashmar’s book makes that connection impossible to ignore. Unlike broader studies of Britain’s colonial economy, such as Matthew Parker’s The Sugar Barons or Michael Taylor’s The Interest (to both of which Lashmar acknowledges a great debt), Drax of Drax Hall narrows its focus to a single family, showing that the Drax dynasty did not just profit from slavery but pioneered its brutal processes.
James Drax, the family’s 17th-century patriarch, was not merely a plantation owner but the founder of a system of control and punishmen. Arriving in Barbados in 1627, he was instrumental in shifting the island’s labour force from white indentured servants to enslaved Africans. By the 1640s, he had devised the plantation model that would dominate the Caribbean for centuries – a vast industrial machine, extracting staggering wealth through calculated cruelty. At the height of their power, the Draxes enslaved up to 330 people at any one time. The violence was staggering: life expectancy for the enslaved on the island was just five years. Lashmar makes clear that, while figures such as Clive or Rhodes may loom larger in the public imagination, James Drax deserves equal, if not greater, infamy as one of history’s great profiteers of human misery.
And yet, while slavery was abolished, the Drax fortune was not. Henry Drax, an 18th-century descendant, inherited not only land but a ruthless business acumen, ensuring the family’s grip on power remained unbroken. When Britain compensated slave owners for their “losses” in 1837, the Draxes collected more than £4,200 – a staggering sum at the time. With that money, they pivoted from colonial extraction to domestic consolidation, expanding their English holdings and further entrenching their wealth. The plantation may have been built in Barbados, but its profits were banked in Dorset and the City of London, where they remain to this day.
Which brings us to Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, the latest in this long line of beneficiaries, who until 2024 was Britain’s wealthiest MP (he lost his seat; the cash is still there). From his vast Charborough estate – surrounded by the so-called “Great Wall of Dorset” – Drax built his career on Brexit and hard-right politics, railing against progressive taxation while presiding over a fortune directly linked to slavery. “I can’t be held responsible for something that happened 300 or 400 years ago,” he has insisted, yet he continues to reap its rewards. Now, as Barbados’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, pushes for reparations and debates whether to seize Drax Hall – the family’s still intact Caribbean plantation – Drax is resisting, hoping that Britain’s role in slavery will once again fade into obscurity.
Lashmar follows the money, tracing the profits from sugar plantations to country estates, from enslaved labour to inherited privilege. If the book has a flaw, it is its exhaustive approach – at times, the sheer number of minor Draxes can overwhelm.
Drax of Drax Hall is not just a look into the dark sources of one family’s fortune; it is an indictment of a nation’s refusal to reckon with its past. Lashmar’s book is a necessary, damning reminder that the ghosts of empire are not distant – they are living, breathing and, in some cases, still collecting rent.
• Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery by Paul Lashmar is published by Pluto (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
