The Crown’s Silence, a new book by Brook Newman, shows how the British monarchy and its navy expanded and protected the trade in slave for hundreds of years.
By the time that that transatlantic trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 the British Crown was the biggest buyer of slaves in the world.
It had bought 13,400 slaves for its army at a price of £900,000.
This was part of Crown ownership and exploitation of slaves from the time of Elizabeth I until well into the 19th century.
The author reports that the Crown trumpeted their part in human slavery putting a royal brand on it, as well as physically branding the slaves it owned.
The Crown owned thousands of slaves in its overseas possessions. While King George IV’s navy was suppressing the transatlantic slave trade he was still profiting from the use and sale of slaves.
The book’s author reports that former slaves petitioned the monarchy to stop this trade but to no effect.
Meanwhile those owned by the Crown included workers on plantations, dockyard workers, shipwrights and carpenters on British navy ships.
Africans freed by the navy might find themselves coerced into apprenticeships or conscripted into the British military.
The author writes that the Royal Navy protected shave ships. It lent ships to slave trade companies and provided the necessary sailors and supplies until the 18th century.
The profits ended up in the pockets of the royal family.
Acknowledgements to the Guardian book review by Chris Osuh.
The Crown’s Silence. The Hidden History of Slavery and the British Monarchy by Brook Newman. Published by HarperCollins.