Charles backs probe into UK monarchy’s slavery links

Britain’s King Charles III is supporting research into the historical links between the monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade, Buckingham Palace said on Thursday.

A month ahead of his coronation, the palace said that academics will gain greater access to royal archives, and that Charles takes the issue “profoundly seriously”.

Charles’s 17th century predecessor King James II was the largest investor in the Royal African Company, which became a brutal pioneer of the transatlantic slave trade.

Last year, Charles told a meeting of Commonwealth leaders that in order to “unlock the power of our common future, we must also acknowledge the wrongs which have shaped our past”.

But there was no apology from the then-heir to the throne for the royal family’s involvement in the transportation and selling of people for profit.

A royal spokesperson said that since inheriting the throne from Queen Elizabeth II, Charles had continued his pledge to deepen his understanding of slavery’s impact with “vigour and determination”.

James II, who was deposed in 1688, was not the only one of Charles’s forebears who was complicit in the slave trade. 

In 1689, according to a previously unseen document published by The Guardian newspaper, Royal African Company shares worth £1,000 were transferred to King William III from slave trader Edward Colston.

Colston became the centre of fierce controversy in June 2020, when protesters in the western city of Bristol toppled his statue.

Charles is due to be crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 6.

Two invitees who have yet to confirm their attendance are his younger son Prince Harry and wife Meghan. 

In 2021, the couple accused the royal family of racism in an interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey after they quit royal duties.

Harry’s brother Prince William furiously responded: “We are very much not a racist family.”