Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Women's role as slave owners is often overlooked, but just like men, they both profited from and maintained the institution of slavery.

In her new book Ayruses, historian Miranda Kaufman profiles nine women who married into the British aristocracy,

bringing huge wealth generated from Caribbean slavery into the country.

I spoke to Miranda to find out more.

Thanks so much for joining me, Miranda, to talk about your new book, Ayruses.

So in the book, you look at the stories of nine wealthy women

whose fortunes came from slavery.

So what drew you to the subject of women who profited from enslaving people?

So it all went back to when I was commissioned by English Heritage back in 2006 to investigate

links between their properties and enslavement and also in abolition. And I spoke to some of the leading scholars at the time.

I was still a PhD student. I spoke to Madge Dresser and James Wolvin, who were amazing

titans of British enslavement history. And they identified sort of about 10 different ways

that a country house might be connected to enslavement for me to

investigate. And that range from people owning plantations and people or investing in transatlantic

trade, but also being merchants of produce like sugar or tobacco or even with the abolition, if some of the men who owned these

houses were involved in the parliamentary debates or at Kenwood Lord Mansfield was the judge

at some of the main court cases regarding the status of Africans in Britain. But one category

that stood out was this category of heiresses. So if the man who owned the house

married an heiress who had inherited wealth from Caribbean enslavement.

Before we kind of delve into individual stories, just give us a sense of the lay of the land.

How common was it for women to inherit plantations in the Caribbean and the enslaved people obviously connected to those plantations.

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