From Elizabeth I’s financing of early slaving voyages to royal boardrooms directing transatlantic trafficking, Britain’s monarchs were active architects of human exploitation. Newly uncovered archival evidence reveals how kings and queens directly profited from enslavement, even instructing agents to scar captives with red-hot crown brands.
As international pressure mounts for formal apologies and reparations, records are exposing the deep institutional links between the British Crown and centuries of colonialism.
Click on to learn more about the British monarchy’s connection to the slave trade.