Reading Log #13

“Prizing ‘Otherness’: A Short History of the Booker” by Graham Huggan

• Booker McConnel (Booker plc), now Booker Group = multinational agribusiness conglomerate employing over 20,000 people and generating annual revenue of $5 billion
  • “…eager to downplay its ninteenth-century colonial past”

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Group BOOKER GROUP
  • purchased by Tesco in 2017, a large British multinational supermarket retailer
  • purchased for 3.7 billion pounds ($4,989,542,500.00 USD)
  • originally founded in 1835, focus on shipping, then later distribution
  • operated the sugar industry in Guyana (British Guiana until independence in 1966)
  • long history of exploitation of sugar workers (indentured labour system in 19th and 20th century)
  • slavery was technically illegal, so indentured servitude was the “work around”
  • at its peak controlled 75% of Guyana sugar industry

• 1952 Jock Campbell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Campbell,_Baron_Campbell_of_Eskan
  • chairman of Booker Brother, McConnel and Co between 1952 and 1967
  • appalled by working conditions of the workers, East Indian cane cutters brought into country under indentured servitude
  • worked to make changes and provide benefits to sugar workers
  • instrumental in setting up Booker’s Author Division, sponsoring the Booker prize

• Founding/sponsoring of Booker Prize
  • est. 1968
  • Jock Campbell purchased 51% of Gildrose Ltd. (owned copyrights of Ian Fleming, James Bond books)
  • 2002 Booker Prize transferred to Booker Prize Foundation, sponsored by the Man Group plc, which also started in the sugar industry