Alex Renton, whose ancestors were enslavers in Jamaica and Tobago, talks to Professor Verene Shepherd, about his family and his new book, Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery, published by Canongate and which is available at Kingston Bookshop. Renton is donating all profits to charity.
VS: You start off the book by saying: “I am an heir of Britain’s slavery past.” Could you explain how you are connected to Britain’s slavery past?
AR: Both my mother and father’s families were involved in African enslavement.
The Fergussons, of Scotland, co-owned a Jamaican estate called Rozelle, in St Thomas, from 1769 to 1875 and a 300 acre estate at Bloody Bay in Tobago. In total, the Fergussons ‘owned’ around 950 enslaved people.
Conversely, on the Renton side, one great-great-great-grandmother was involved in abolition campaigning in Edinburgh in the 19th century. Meanwhile, a great-great-great-great-grandfather was born in Jamaica and appears to have been the grandson of a freed African woman, Mary de la Roche, by a white plantation owner. He himself ‘owned’ two enslaved people in 1817. My DNA test shows a small percentage from West Africa. . .