Prior to his coronation on May 6, 2023, England’s King Charles III expressed his support for research into the monarchy’s historical ties with Trans-Atlantic slavery after the appearance of a document showing a predecessor to the new king had stake in a slave trading company, while according to a report published in The Guardian, several members of the royal family was holding stakes in the cruel and inhuman trade of slavery – mostly targeting African nationals.
Earlier, The Guardian quoting a previously unseen document said, Prince William’s Kensington Palace home had links to slavery. It said: “…A document found in the archives by the historian Dr Brooke Newman, and published for the first time by the Guardian, highlights the involvement of the British monarchy in the appalling trade. The publication of the document has added impetus to calls for the royal family to thoroughly investigate their historical links to transatlantic slavery.
“Four lines of elaborately ink-written scrawl state that £1,000 of shares were given to William III in 1689. The shares were in the Royal African Company (RAC), which captured, enslaved and transported thousands of African people, with the monopoly power of a royal charter. The document clearly bears the handwritten name of the now notorious Edward Colston…”.
According to The Guardian, Buckingham Palace did not comment on the document but said it supported a research project, co-sponsored by Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), which manages several palaces, into the monarchy’s involvement in the slave trade. Historians specializing in the monarchy’s centuries-long involvement in the enslavement of African people cautiously welcomed the palace’s statement but said much more needed to be done.
King Charles has previously made public expressions of regret at the suffering that slavery inflicted, describing it as an “appalling atrocity” when visiting a former slaving fort in Ghana in November 2018. In the speech to Commonwealth nations in Rwanda in June 2022, the British monarch said ways must be found to “acknowledge our past”, including slavery, which he called the “most painful period”.
Following his coronation, people are pessimistic about King Charles actually taking any steps to further investigate the case of his family’s involvement in trading in African people as the white supremacy is being embedded in the British monarchy while there also is visible existence of racist behavior amongst the members of the British royal family. This was compounded by revelations soon after from Prince Harry and his biracial wife Meghan Markle that there were concerns about the darkness of their son Archie’s skin color from someone within the institution. William and Kate’s Caribbean tour then received backlash for its patronizing colonial tropes; images of them parading in a 4×4 waving at their subjects seemed oddly anachronistic. And in 2022 the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, was forced to resign after her racist interrogation of Ngozi Fulani, the then-CEO of Black domestic abuse charity Sistah Space (who later resigned because of the backlash the charity faced). In asking Fulani: “Where are you really from?” Lady Hussey revealed how comfortable people within the institution are with being casually racist.
According to media reports, despite a rather positive image as a loving grandmother, Queen Elizabeth’s record on racism was pretty disturbing. Her official response to the interpersonal racism suffered by Meghan was to insist she knew nothing about it and wanted to solve these issues secretly or privately. Queen Elizabeth II even had a ban on hiring staff of color in any of the positions inside palaces – proving she also was a cruel racist. Despite the fact that the majority of the people in the world had seen Queen Elizabeth as a harmless and benevolent order woman was totally a miscalculation. Instead she was having a heart filled with hatred towards people of color – which she had openly demonstrated almost on a regular basis. The queen and all other members of the British royal family are having extreme hatred towards the people of color, while they in most cases do not even wish to consider them as human beings.
With such a notorious mindset, it possibly is unwise to believe King Charles III may admit the crimes committed by his ancestors by engaging in slave trade and seek apology for such acts.
