Catherine Hall is a well-known historian and is presently Professor of History at University College London. Nicholas Draper is a Senior Researcher in the Department of History at University College London. His areas of interest include slavery and abolition. Keith McClelland is a Senior Researcher in the Department of History at University College London and a well-established historian of the nineteenth century. Katie Donington is a Research Fellow in the Department of History at University College London. Rachel Lang is an administrator in the Department of History at University College London.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Possessing people: absentee slave-owners within British society; 3. Helping make Britain great: the commercial legacies of slave-ownership in Britain; 4. Redefining the West India interest: politics and the legacies of slave-ownership; 5. Reconfiguring race: the stories the slave-owners told; 6. Transforming capital: slavery, family, commerce and the making of the Hibbert family; Conclusion; Appendix 1. Making history in a prosopography; Appendix 2. Glossary of claimant categories; Appendix 3. A note on the database; Bibliography.

'This is an important book which contributes significantly to modern British history. It, and the data which underpin it, have the potential not only to re-construct our national memory but also to inform related projects in countries such as France and the Netherlands, studies of re-investment in Britain's 'informal' empire in the Americas, and demands from Caribbean states for reparations for the enduring suffering inflicted by the Atlantic slave trade.' Mandy Banton, Family and Community History