The Crown's Silence
The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery
Format:Hardback
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Publishing:27th Jan '26
£25.00
This title is due to be published on 27th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
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.
"Brooke Newman has written a brave, brilliant, and essential book, telling truths that many will not want to hear. I hope The Crown's Silence will inspire investigations of other maritime monarchies as we reckon with the still-deadly legacies of human bondage." — Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History “The Crown’s Silence chips away at the hard stone of buried history protecting the British Royal Family’s entanglement with slavery. Brooke Newman confidently, deftly unearths the lies, the denials, and the enormous amounts of money made off the backs of enslaved people, all the way back to Queen Elizabeth I." — Kate Winkler Dawson, author of American Sherlock and The Sinners All Bow "Diligent, forensic and surprising, The Crown’s Silence is a book that will provoke many necessary and overdue conversations." — Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe "At last! A comprehensive yet forensic study of the royal family's slavery involvement. In response to Brooke N. Newman’s groundbreaking new book, the royals should use their global platform to promote better public knowledge of the slavery system and its legacies." — Professor Corinne Fowler, author of The Countryside: Ten Walks Through Rural Britain and its Hidden History of Empire "Brooke Newman’s meticulously sourced and gripping book puts the British Royal Family’s sanction and investment in the transatlantic slave trade in full view. Important, timely, and fascinating on every page, she asks the pressing question: will King Charles III become the first British monarch to break the Crown’s silence on this troubling history?" — Laura Trevelyan, journalist and Honorary Fellow at the University of the West Indies’ PJ Patterson Institute
ISBN: 9780063290976
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
464 pages