White Debt

Critics Review

• Brilliant . . . Striking . . . Full of details that will send a chill down your spine. Harding delivers a masterclass in how authors of history can play an active role, for good and for bad, in how these moral questions are framed

  GUARDIAN

• A deep dive into colonialism and enslavement, with personal legacies that continue to resonate today – a deeply affecting and forensically elegant book for our times

  PHILIPPE SANDS

• This well-researched history of the 1823 slave uprising in Demerara is a page-turner . . . Harding lays out what happened with novelistic (but still assiduously researched) flair

  TELEGRAPH

• Authentic, bold and poignant, WHITE DEBT is a captivating tale of resistance and an urgent antidote to our collective amnesia

  DAVID LAMMY MP

• The Demerara episode graphically reveals the hidden cruelties of colonialism, not to mention British myopia towards the atrocities. Harding tells the story with impressive drama and detail

  THE TIMES

• WHITE DEBT is an important step in our routinely dysfunctional national conversation about the Atlantic slave trade

  SATHNAM SANGHERA

• [A] vital read

  THE i NEWSPAPER, best non-fiction books of 2022

• Excellent . . . Harding is a thoughtful and honest writer . . . an exemplary piece of history writing

  LITERARY REVIEW

• An important and timely book told with great sympathy, honesty and an original approach. His family is always present, in the background, but he does not shy away from criticism and asking big questions which many in this country must try and answer

  ANNE SEBBA

• Some write about the past. Thomas Harding, our most human historian, has, once again, brought it alive . . . in all its tragedy, glory, complexity

  JOHN LEWIS-STEMPEL

• Puts Harding alongside other recent revisers of Britain’s imperial history . . . provides a valuable introduction to the various strands of this debate

  OBSERVER

• Honest, compelling and certainly timely, WHITE DEBT lays bare the nature of a crime against an entire race of people, for which there was no punishment. As Thomas Harding has done, all readers should consider; what is my part in the wider story of the British slave trade and how do I make amends where necessary?

  ELSIE HARRY, African-Guyanese Activist & Poet

• Gripping . . . Novelistic in its narrative energy, its jeopardy and its tensions, WHITE DEBT is a rich story so well told

  ALLAN LITTLE

• I was much moved by WHITE DEBT. I am so glad Thomas Harding wrote it. He tells the story of Britain’s appalling role in slavery with great sensitivity and leads the reader to the only possible conclusion, that there is a debt and it must be paid

  RABBI JULIA NEUBERGER

• WHITE DEBT is a timely, pioneering, game changer. Its compelling narrative and thought-provoking reflections enable us to (re)visit plantation slavery with fresh eyes. It invites the reader to reflect on a core period of British history that has for too long been ignored or dismissed as bearing no relationship to present-day inequities that exist between White and Black people. This book is compulsory reading for anyone interested in understanding the case for reparations and will delight readers who are tired of portrayals of enslaved Africans as marginal to the history of abolitionism. WHITE DEBT is a courageous tour de force

  JUANITA COX, co-founder of Guyana Speaks

• A major study of the 1823 slave uprising in British Guyana, revealing the utter brutality of the slaveowners and the courage as well as the organisational genius of the African leaders of the uprising. That Harding inserts himself in the narrative, seeking to make amends for his forebears’ involvement in slave-produced commodities, makes his book all the more compelling, since it creates a dialogue between the living and the dead

  PROFESSOR DAVID DABYDEEN