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 in gentry capitalist networks of kinship and regional affiliation, matrimonial alliance, mercantile expertise, and public service (1). Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic explores the economic, political, and social dimensions operating in the British Empire, which allowed some people to prosper. The book examines economic factors in various functions of business and prevailing capitalist ideologies, the political relationship between metropole and colony, and the rise of gentry families in Britain; the social aspects reveal interactions of small-scale merchants and planters, women, and enslaved Africans.

The book is divided into eleven chapters. Chapter 2 discusses issues pertaining to memory. Chapters 2–5 provide us with insights into the Hall, Vassall, Lascelles, Maxwell, and Clarke families. Emphasizing the role of family and regional connections is the aim of these chapters. Chapters 6–8 examine the mechanics of trade operating on Barbados, but also in Britain. It clearly details how some families became extremely rich. For example, we learn about accusations of insider trading. Chapters 9–10 attempt to bring the enslaved African population residing on these Caribbean estates into the story. Smith shows us the richness in data that many of these historical collections contain on enslaved people in the colonies. Finally, chapter 11 concludes on the various objectives and themes of the book.

Smith threads together an impressive number of primary and secondary sources. A tremendous amount of time and effort allowed him to track down and analyze materials in repositories in the United Kingdom, Barbados, the United States, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Guyana, and New Zealand. He reminds us of the survival of documents from the early modern period of Barbados, using government, family and estate papers, manuscripts, an assortment of inventories, private correspondence, deeds, wills, and powers of attorney. However, Smith also reminds us that as historians, we cannot take for granted accessibility to primary sources. In 1940, plantation journals prepared by the Lascelles family's attorneys and managers were destroyed during bomb raids in World War II. Economic historians will appreciate Smith's use of tables and graphs, as well as helpful maps, which establish the location of estates in Barbados, Jamaica, and Tobago.

The book heavily draws on the earlier works of Richard Pares. Nevertheless, Smith tells a story of success, but also the failure of families and men such as Gedney Clarke and countless others who lost their properties to the Lascelles. He demonstrates that family connections played an important role; hence, strategic marriages of daughters and sons solidified some business and political affairs. The bilateral trade of Barbados and Britain is stressed; however, Smith extends the scope of British and Creole men on Barbados, who imposed themselves in the commercial affairs of a Dutch colony, Demarara. For example, the Clarke family invested in several plantations in Demarara in the mid-eighteenth century. Furthermore, he hints at the economic outcome of families such as the Clarkes, who decided to reside on Barbados to make their fortune but eventually failed, as opposed to the Lascelles, who returned to England and continued to grow wealthy. I agree with Smith that more research has to be carried out on planters, merchants, and their families, who remained in the Caribbean in their hope of making a fortune.

The book is persuasive and should be welcomed by historians interested in the British Atlantic world from the mid-seventeenth through early nineteenth century. The back and forth motion of the peoples in this book suggests that Britain was home for some but also in the memory of others. Since families like the Lascelles returned to England, Smith illustrates that these former residents of Barbados established themselves in the upper echelons of British society. Moreover, we learn that the historical past of the Lascelles is very much in the imagination of contemporary British culture due to several British Broadcasting Corporation productions on the family. In addition, the recent focus of Harewood House Trust of North Yorkshire on the family's past relationship with slavery has shaped popular impressions of the Lascelles family and others connected to them through various Trust-sponsored educational programs.