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In this lecture, Brooke Newman, Ph.D., examines the historical links between the British Crown and slavery from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. She traces the extent to which British monarchs and members of the royal family invested in and defended the transatlantic trade in African captives and the expansion of colonial slavery before pivoting to embrace anti-slavery during the age of Victoria. Newman's work reveals how Crown involvement in slave trading and slavery evolved as the institution of the monarchy and the exercise of royal power transformed over the centuries.

Speaker

Brooke Newman is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is an award-winning historian of early modern Britain and the British monarchy, with a research specialization in the history and legacies of slavery. Her essays have appeared in The Guardian, Slate, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, i-news, and Scalawag Magazine, and her research on the Crown’s historical links to slavery has been featured by the BBC, NPR, PRX, Vox, the Jamaica Gleaner, Yahoo News, CBC, ABC, Time, Smithsonian Magazine, the Richmond Times Dispatch, Al Jazeera, and other outlets.