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 -- 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 -- The Inheritors. Luxury and debt -- The war against America -- The West Indian 'Nabobs': Absenteeism, decadence and decline -- Peace and freedom.