The Queen's Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls

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Pictured behind them are slaves loading tobacco into barrels while one shelters a merchant with an umbrella. To do justice to their subjects, historians of slavery must grapple with the problematic nature of the archive. However, the limitations of the archive do not explain why, as the coronation of Charles III nears, the British monarchy has not apologised for its historic links to slavery. The paper trail of crown involvement in slavery, though incomplete, is nonetheless extensive. As Saidiya Hartman noted in Lose Your Mother: “Money multiplied if fed human blood.” That British monarchs and members of the royal family invested in and profited from the slave trade and Atlantic slavery is indisputable.

In 2018, Prince Charles denounced Britain’s role in the slave trade as an “atrocity” but there have been calls for the Queen also to apologise on behalf of the monarchy. Still standing today at 42 Miller Street lies the former home of a major tobacco importer, Robert Findlay. Those of us living in the rich societies of the west have all, albeit profoundly unequally, enjoyed the fruits of racial capitalism,” stressed historian Catherine Hall, head of UCL’s Legacies of British Slavery project; “we are all survivors of slavery, not just those who can directly trace their lineages.” Unwin, Rayner. The Defeat of John Hawkins: A Biography of His Third Slaving Voyage. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1960; New York: Macmillan, 1960. Cotton manufacturing consumed and enriched Lancashire, including the port of Liverpool. Over 80 per cent of the cotton imported was slave-grown. It is probable that about 20 per cent of the British labour force was one way or another involved in the importation and manufacturing and then the export of cotton cloth. Bankers, manufacturers, shippers, traders, weavers, printers, dyers, shipbuilders and many others earned a living or made a fortune from cotton. ( 29 ) There were very few protests about the importation of slave-grown cotton, compared with the protests about sugar. Clearly, it was more important economically to the wealth of the UK.

A gripping, meticulously researched and artfully written account of the life, exploits and character of notorious sea-dog John Hawkyns, England’s first slave trader. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly has called THE QUEEN’S SLAVE TRADER “a tour de force.” We will soon know more about the present, too. Historic Royal Palaces are leading a review that may make it clearer than ever before how former and current royal residences are linked to the slave trade. Kensington Palace, Prince William and Kate Middleton’s London residence, will be reviewed. As will Hampton Court Palace, which is owned by Her Majesty. My upcoming book, The Queen’s Silence (published by Mariner and Mudlark), will join these ongoing investigations and make the Royal Family’s links to the slave trade and colonial slavery explicit. Hamilton, Alan (22 June 2006). "Slaver's descendant begs forgiveness". The Times . Retrieved 1 July 2020.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. We don’t know how exactly or to what extent living members of the Royal Family continue to benefit from the financial legacies of slavery. But they have undoubtedly profited from it in the past. In addition to the personal and national wealth accrued over the centuries through royal investment in and protection of slave trading and colonial slavery, there is also a direct slavery compensation link to recent royals. King Charles II gave the Company of Royal Adventurers of England a royal charter. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images Charles II ( 1660-1685 ) John Hawkins was born to a prominent family of ship builders and captains in the naval port of Plymouth in Devon. His exact date of birth is unknown, but was likely between November 1532 and March 1533. [1] He was the second son of William Hawkins, who was the first Englishman to sail to Brazil, [2] and Joan Trelawny, daughter and sole heiress of Roger Trelawny of Brighton, Cornwall. [3] Sir Francis Drake, his second cousin, was brought up and lived in the same Protestant household as Hawkins. [4]

The strong performance had enabled the commissioners to increase their financial support to C of E dioceses, cathedrals and churches during the Covid pandemic, the report said. Williamson, James. Hawkins of Plymouth: a new History of Sir John Hawkins. 1949. Second edition, 1969. The mansion was built by Tobacco Lord Andrew Buchanan of Drumpellar, the uncle of Andrew Buchanan whom Buchanan Street is named after. In 1588, Hawkins served as a Vice-Admiral and fought in the victory over the Spanish Armada, for which he was knighted for gallantry. As Treasurer of the Navy, Hawkins became the chief architect of the Elizabethan Navy. He redesigned the navy so the ships were faster, more manoeuvrable and had more firepower. Hawkins pioneered, and was an early promoter of, English involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. He is considered to be the first English merchant to profit from the Triangle Trade, selling enslaved people from Africa to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies in the late 16th century.

Before being destroyed by fire in 1911, the Tontine Coffee Rooms at Trongate would host leading figures from the community and soon became a favoured meeting place for the rich tobacco and textile merchants of Glasgow. a b Cacciottolo, Mario (23 June 2006). "My ancestor traded in human misery". BBC News . Retrieved 1 July 2020. Republican campaigner Graham Smith has led the charge noting that the current royals “are sitting on a hugely significant amount which was acquired from slavery and empire”. A colonial mindset Plagued by crime and riddled with street gangs, the troubled Los Angelesneighborhood that Doria Ragland, 60, calls home couldn't be more different to London's leafy Kensington," the 2016 article reads.

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The C of E is also reviewing thousands of monuments in churches and cathedrals that contain historical references to slavery and colonialism.

A gripping tale and a sterling analysis of England’s first foray into the nastiest of human enterprises. (16 pp. b&w photos, not seen) The report says: “Long-established endowment funds may give rise to a reputational risk linked to the possibility of their original source, or early investment of funds, having slave trade connections. This could be the case for the original Queen Anne’s Bounty and Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ funds.” The stone heads located on the Tontine Building were given their name after a society was established in 1781. On 27 March 2007, nearly 450 years after Elizabeth I sponsored John Hawkins’ slaving expeditions to west Africa, Elizabeth II attended a service in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a sermon focused on slavery’s “hideously persistent” legacies. “We, who are the heirs of the slave-owning and slave-trading nations of the past, have to face the fact that our historic prosperity was built in large part on this atrocity,” he said. Hawkins’ legacy divides opinion. The historian Geoffrey Elton appraised Hawkins as "one of the founding-fathers of England's naval tradition ... he was a man of commanding presence and intellect, of outstanding abilities as a seaman, administrator, fighter and diplomat." [21] More recently he has been described as a pirate and slave trader. [22]It wasn't until Markle left the royal family that she admitted she felt "unprotected" by the royal family's press team, who reportedly prohibited her from defending herself against the media.