For centuries, the British crown and the Royal Navy were deeply entangled in the transatlantic slave trade, a disturbing historical fact uncovered by historian Brooke Newman in her new book, “The Crown’s Silence.” The research reveals that by 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade in its empire, the British crown had become the world’s largest buyer of enslaved people, purchasing 13,000 men for the army at a cost of £900,000.
Newman, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, spent a decade researching royal archives and manuscripts to uncover the monarchy’s hidden ties to slavery. She found that the crown not only actively participated in the slave trade, but also used it to expand the British empire, with the Royal Navy playing a crucial role in protecting slave trading vessels and even loaning out its ships to slave trading companies.
“The crown used to trumpet their connections to the transatlantic slave trade. They put the royal brand on this practice and literally on people’s bodies,” Newman said. Even after the abolition of the slave trade, the crown continued to profit from the labor and sale of enslaved people, with thousands of enslaved individuals “owned” by the monarchy in the Caribbean until 1831.
The book also reveals how the crown coerced Africans liberated from slave ships by the Royal Navy into apprenticeships or conscripted them into military service, a practice that continued even after the abolition of the slave trade. “Things are not really better regardless of whether you’re owned by the monarchy or not,” Newman said.
The Crown’s Silence sheds light on a dark chapter in British history, one that the monarchy has long sought to conceal. As the nation grapples with its colonial past, this book serves as a powerful reminder of the profound and lasting impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the British monarchy and its legacy.
