Buckingham Palace has announced that King Charles has backed a university study into the ties between the British Monarchy and the slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries.
King Charles III, who is tradition-bound to remain politically neutral as the United Kingdom’s head of state, has agreed to facilitate a study by the University of Manchester with Historic Royal Palaces to examine the Royal Family’s role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Although virtually no one in modern-day Britain would argue in favour of slavery, the topic has become a hot-button issue following the resurgence of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, with left-wing academics seizing upon historical grievances to attack Britain’s role in the world and prominent historical figures, while typically overlooking the fact that the country was the first in the world to abolish slavery and paid dearly in blood and treasure to stamp out the practice throughout the Western World.
In a statement released on Thursday, Buckingham Palace said per the BBC: “This is an issue that His Majesty takes profoundly seriously. Given the complexities of the issues it is important to explore them as thoroughly as possible.”
The Palace went on to say that the King intends on continuing his personal education into the topic with “vigour and determination”.
The study will be carried out as a PhD project by historian Camilla de Koning and is expecteed to be completed by 2026. The academics will be granted full access to the Royal Archives and the Royal Collection by Buckingham Palace.
Commenting on her intentions, De Koning said of the Royal Family’s ivolvement in the slave trade in the 1600s and 1700s: “It seems like they are just stamping decrees, but they are actually very involved as diplomatic players.
“I’m hoping to change that perspective, that you can see there are way more links between the colonial and the monarch than ever have been investigated, or have ever been noticed, so we can flip that around.”
The announcement of support for the study from the Palace came after the left-wing Guardian newpaper published a previously unearthed document showing that in 1689, King William III — the namesake of the current heir to the throne — received shares in the slavery-tied Royal African Company from Sir Edward Colston.
Colston, who was previously a celebrated figure for his work as a philanthropist, has since become a chief target of the modern left for his involvement in the slavery, a practice that was commonplace during his lifetime. In 2020, Colston’s statue in Bristol was torn down and thrown in the local harbour by Black Lives Matter radicals, all of whom were let off without punishment for the act of vandalism after their lawyer argued they were “on the right side of history”.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.