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  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
  • The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke N. Newman book cover
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The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas

by Brooke N. Newman

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Royal power and the history of slavery

$25.45 USD
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Hardcover New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Royal power and the history of slavery

Brooke N. Newman traces British royal involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and colonial slavery, from Elizabeth I through the present. The book centers on royal actions and investments, connecting the monarchy’s role in building a slave empire in colonial America and the Caribbean with the enduring legacies of slavery. It also places the lives and struggles of people of African origin and ancestry within Britain’s national history, alongside the institutions and wealth shaped by their enslavement. The account challenges the image of Britain as simply an abolitionist nation and examines how the monarchy’s history intersects with the racial inequalities that followed slavery.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in British monarchy and Stuart-era history.
  • Readers studying slavery, the Atlantic world, and colonial history.
  • Readers exploring the historical roots of racial inequality.

Themes

British monarchy and slaveryTransatlantic slave tradeColonial America and the CaribbeanHistorical memory and racial inequality

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

For readers of Annette Gordon-Reed and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the shocking untold story of the British royal family's centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy--from Elizabeth I to the present--and the monarchy's culpability in the racial injustice that gave birth to the United States.

For centuries, Britain has told itself and the world that it is an abolitionist nation, one that, unlike the United States, rejected human bondage and dismantled its Atlantic slave empire without tearing itself apart in violence. An abolitionist nation headed by a just, humane monarch who liberated enslaved Africans and recognized their descendants as free and equal subjects of the British Crown. As Prince William put it recently, "We're very much not a racist family." When slaveholding nations write their collective history, the enslavers hold the pen.

Now, acclaimed historian Brooke Newman reveals the true story: the enslavers were supported by members of the royal family. From the 1560s to 1807, the British monarchy invested in the transatlantic slave trade and built a slave empire in colonial America and the Caribbean, with the labor of millions of enslaved Africans who would see none of its riches. It profited from African slave trading and hereditary bondage, setting the stage for other colonial powers to develop brutal slave systems that remained legal long after full emancipation in the British Empire in 1838. The scars of this history remain visible the world over, from economic inequality and educational and health disparities to racial discrimination and prejudice. Still, Crown officials continue to insist the legacies of slavery "belong to the past."

Newman focuses not on portraits of British monarchs but on their actions and investments that led to the rise and fall of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial slavery, and on some of the people whose lives it took, placing the struggles and sacrifices of innumerable individuals of African origin and ancestry at the center of Britain's story.

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