Prince William.Photo: Tim Rooke/Shutterstock
Prince Williamneeds to do more than express his “profound sorrow” over Britain’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade: He needs to take steps to repair it, says Hakim Adi from the University of Chichester in England.
Continues Adi, “One needs to look at the whole context of the royal tour. The whole reason for the visit seems to be to maintain the colonial ties between Britain and the Caribbean, particularly in the wake of the efforts of Barbados and others to become republics.”
“The whole tour is designed to reinforce the relationship founded on slavery and colonialism, so it’s meaningless,” he says. “It has sought to highlight this history, but there’s no sense of repair or attempt at a repair.”
At the end of the couple’s eight-day trip, William further addressed the issue, issuing an unprecedented statement about the roiling controversy surrounding their visit to the Caribbean countries. “I know that this tour has brought into even sharper focus questions about the past and the future,” he said on March 26, the day he and Kate flew back home to the U.K. “In Belize, Jamaica and The Bahamas that future is for the people to decide upon.
Largely thanks to its royal connections, the company — which changed its name to the Royal African Company in 1672 — was at the forefront of a rapid expansion in slave trading, with British ships believed to have transported 254,000 Africans across the Atlantic in chains between 1663 and the end of the 17th century to work on sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations.
In 1713, the royal connection became yet more lucrative, when Queen Anne signed the Treaty of Utrecht with King Philip V of Spain. This gave Britain the “Assiento de Negros” (“Agreement of Blacks”), an exclusive contract to trade slaves to the Spanish colonies in the Americas for 30 years.
The U.K. Government then sold the contract to the South Sea Company for $9.8 million, with Queen Anne securing more than 20% of the stock for herself (worth $263 million today).
Britain continued to play the lead role in the African slave trade throughout the 18th century. Despite the enormous wealth it generated, however, public opinion gradually turned and in 1807 the British Parliament outlawed the slave trade.
Slavery itself was later made completely illegal in the U.K. and most British colonies in 1833 through the Slavery Abolition Act.
Yet it wasn’t a completely clean break: To bring the trade to a halt, the U.K. government paid the equivalent of $330 million in compensation to the slave-trading companies — a debt the British treasury did not fully repay until 2015.
“Every single monarch from Elizabeth I to George IV was connected with human trafficking — every single one,” says Adi.
“Those who have come after that period have benefited from that wealth, which was accumulated both from human trafficking and the subsequent colonial rule — as are all the major institutions in the U.K., like the Church of England and the Bank of England. All of them are connected to that period of exploitation and plundering of the world’s humanity.”
It is because of this historic link that Adi believes the royals now need to do far more than express their sorrow.
“If you’re really concerned about the history, then, as a beneficiary of it, you should make a stand and encourage others to make a stand,” he says.
“The people calling for an apology and reparations is a legitimate thing to be asking, but the U.K. government and the monarchy are doing the opposite. They are calling for the continuation of these colonial ties and ties of exploitation.
“Actions speak louder than words, and [William’s] actions are to maintain that historic relationship.”
source: people.com
