Long before modern apologies, the British monarchy and its investors built fortunes on the transatlantic slave trade
The question of slavery and reparations has recently returned to the center of international debate, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean. The conference held in Ghana on reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, as well as the petition filed by a Jamaican delegation to the British king, engaged in the struggle for historical recognition. The debate has also been brought into sharper focus by an investigation published by The Guardian, which examined the involvement of the British monarchy in the system of slavery and the historical links between the Crown and the trafficking of Africans.
Taken together, the developments raise a fundamental question: How can the British monarchy and the British state genuinely address a past in which the Crown was directly connected to the economic and political structures of slavery?
There are symbols that, on their own, encapsulate centuries of history. A crown branded with a red-hot iron onto the skin of an enslaved human being is one of them. It was a real, documented practice carried out by the South Sea Company, directly supported by the British monarchy during the reign of Queen Anne.
In 1713, this partnership secured for Britain the exclusive right to deliver nearly 4,800 enslaved Africans every year to the Spanish colonies in the Americas. This chilling figure was only the beginning of a broader system in which the British monarchy was a central actor.
The monarchy as a shareholder
History often portrays the transatlantic slave trade as an impersonal economic phenomenon, driven by commercial companies, far removed from political power. The reality is very different though. The Royal African Company, one of the most important slave-trading companies in British history, was directly led by James, Duke of York, who would later become King James II. Under his leadership, the company forcibly transported at least 150,000 Africans across the Atlantic.
Around 13,000 investors in the British slave trade have been identified, more than 10,500 of whom now have detailed biographical information. They include members of parliament, merchants, more than a thousand women from the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, as well as members of the royal family itself.
In total, the British slave trade forcibly removed more than 3 million Africans from their homeland and sent them to plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean, a figure that conveys the true human cost of the prosperity created by British colonialism.
In the face of these facts, the official response of the contemporary monarchy remains, at best, cautious. King Charles III has described slavery as an “atrocious tragedy” and expressed support for historical research into the links between the monarchy and the slave trade. This is a symbolic gesture, and it marks a departure from decades of near-total silence on the subject.
However, a cold fact remains: To date, no official apology has been issued by the British government, and no serious discussion of possible reparations has been initiated at the state level.
The calculated caution is not unique to the United Kingdom, but it takes on particular significance there because it is precisely the monarchy, an institution supposedly embodying the continuity and unity of the nation, that is directly implicated by the historical evidence. Acknowledging “links” with slavery, as current royal communications do, is one thing. Acknowledging direct responsibility, with all the political, moral, and financial consequences that this entails, is another. Between the two lies the space in which the struggle over Britain’s colonial memory has been unfolding for years.
From the Koh-i-Noor to the Benin Bronzes
This unease can also be seen in the objects that the monarchy continues to possess. The Koh-i-Noor, the colossal diamond taken from the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era, is the most emblematic example. At her coronation in 2023, Queen Camilla chose not to wear the Queen Mother’s crown in which the stone is set, a choice apparently dictated by diplomatic caution rather than by any fundamental reconsideration, since the diamond remains preserved, as if nothing had happened, among the royal jewels.
The same pattern can be seen with the Benin Bronzes, looted during the 1897 British military expedition and still largely displayed at the British Museum, far from the African soil from which they were taken.
In both cases, the British position remains the same: Discuss, study, postpone – but do not return. These objects are material evidence of an organized system of looting, which official diplomacy continues to treat as a secondary issue.
This British debate is part of a much broader movement, driven for years by countries and peoples that directly experienced the slave trade and colonialism. Jamaica’s recent demand for reparations from the British government is one example among many, as are similar claims advanced by several African and Caribbean nations through international institutions and Pan-African forums.
These demands raise a very concrete question of the moral and material debt created by centuries of exploitation, a debt that the direct heirs of this system continue largely to evade.
The origins of the current wealth
One obvious fact, too often minimized, must be recalled here: The wealth accumulated by the British monarchy and by a large part of its aristocracy was not created in a vacuum. To a significant extent, it rests on forced labor, deportation, and the suffering of millions of human beings torn from the African continent. To celebrate royal heritage – its crowns, diamonds, and palaces – without clearly naming this origin is to erase an essential part of history.
Acknowledging “links” with slavery without drawing any concrete consequences turns a crime against humanity into a page of history accessible in archives. Words of compassion, however sincere, do not replace official apologies, reparations, or the restitution of looted cultural property.
For African peoples and their descendants in the diaspora, this question concerns the full recognition of a historical crime, the restitution of what was stolen – wealth, objects, and dignity – and the construction of an honest relationship at last between the former colonial power and the nations it plundered. As long as this recognition remains cautious and without concrete consequences, the debate will continue to impose itself with increasing force in British and international public life.
