{"id":15011,"date":"2026-01-23T13:21:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T13:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=15011"},"modified":"2026-01-23T13:21:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T13:21:25","slug":"british-crown-was-worlds-largest-buyer-of-enslaved-people-by-1807-book-reveals-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=15011","title":{"rendered":"British crown was world\u2019s largest buyer of enslaved people by 1807, book reveals | Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The British crown and the navy expanded and protected the trade in enslaved African people for hundreds of years, unprecedented research into the monarchy\u2019s historical ties to slavery has found.<\/p>\n

The Crown\u2019s Silence, a book by the historian Brooke Newman, follows the Guardian\u2019s 2023 Cost of the Crown<\/a> report, which explored the British monarchy\u2019s hidden ties to transatlantic slavery.<\/p>\n

The book reveals that by 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade in its empire, the British crown had become the world\u2019s largest buyer of enslaved people, buying 13,000 men for the army for \u00a3900,000.<\/p>\n

Buckingham Palace does not comment on books, but a source said King Charles, who has previously spoken of \u201cpersonal sorrow\u201d at the suffering caused by slavery, took the matter \u201cprofoundly seriously\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>A detail from a portrait of George IV.<\/span> Composite: Getty\/Rex Features<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Newman said she had started working on the book 10 years ago, having found \u201csecret correspondence\u201d detailing George IV\u2019s fears of an uprising like the Haitian Revolution<\/a> happening in Jamaica. She made the discovery while researching an earlier work about the Caribbean island, which was a British colony for more than 300 years.<\/p>\n

Newman, who is an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, researched royal archives and manuscripts relating to the Royal Navy<\/a>, colonial officers, government officials, the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company for The Crown\u2019s Silence.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cThe crown used to trumpet their connections to the transatlantic slave trade. They put the royal brand on this practice and literally on people\u2019s bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 18th and early 19th century, \u201cformerly enslaved people, like Olaudah Equiano<\/a>, Mary Prince<\/a> and Ottobah Cugoano<\/a>, were directly appealing to the monarchy, sending books that they\u2019ve written, sending them letters and petitioning them in newspapers. And the monarchy is doing nothing.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Brooke Newman started working on the book after finding \u2018secret correspondence\u2019 detailing George IV\u2019s fears of an uprising in Jamaica.<\/span> Photograph: Julie Adams<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only as you have activism on the part of people like [Black abolitionists] Sons of Africa that things really changing in the 19th century and the monarchy starts to dramatically pivot away from their previous stance,\u201d Newman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the key revelations is that the crown owns thousands of enslaved people in the Caribbean up until 1831. Even when George IV is essentially overseeing the Royal Navy\u2019s suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, he is still technically profiting from the labour and sale of enslaved people. This is something the government are aware of and they\u2019re concerned about how it looks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newman said enslaved people \u201cowned\u201d by the crown had included workers on plantations forfeited after revolts or planters dying without heirs, and people \u201cpurchased in the king\u2019s name\u201d to work at royal dockyards and naval installations, in a process that began in Jamaica<\/a> under George II.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cWhite people sent to work on the island were succumbing to tropical fevers and they decide we need to purchase enslaved men and boys we can train as skilled labourers who will be owned by the king \u2013 as shipwrights, as carpenters, as caulkers, servicing Royal Navy ships. Once they decide that this is a cost-saving measure for the monarchy, they start replicating it elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book details how after abolition, Africans liberated from slavers\u2019 ships by Royal Navy patrols were coerced into apprenticeships or conscripted into British military service.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>The Crown\u2019s Silence.<\/span> Photograph: PR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Slavery exploded as an industry in the 18th century, after the Royal African Company, founded by the Stuart monarchy, lost its monopoly, fuelling the expansion of English cities such as Liverpool and Bristol, Britain\u2019s insurance and finance sectors, and the United States, Newman said.<\/p>\n

The Royal Navy was \u201ccritically involved in expanding the slave trade, in protecting slaving vessels \u2026 loaning out Royal Navy vessels to slave trading companies and stocking them with men and supplies\u201d, she added, from the reign of Elizabeth I until the 18th century, with profits flowing back to thecrown.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the 18th century, [the British monarchy] don\u2019t need to be involved in these more minor behind-the-scenes ways \u2013 it becomes about defending the empire itself in major imperial conflicts like the seven years\u2019 war and the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge II and George III start thinking about enslaved men as pawns in this imperial chess game. Even after the abolition of the slave trade, liberated Africans are forcibly conscripted into West India regiments and a royal forces station in west Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are not really better regardless of whether you\u2019re owned by the monarchy or not. They want it to be better because it should be, if you\u2019re going to have the king as your nominal master, but that\u2019s not the way things played out on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n