King Charles III Supports Research Into British Monarchy’s Involment In Slavery

King Charles III supports research examining the British monarchy’s involvement with slavery.

The Associated Press News reports that a document shows that an ancestor had shares in a slave-trading company. This comes after The Guardian published the paper showing William III’s ties to slavery.

According to The Guardian, Prof. Brooke Newman found the document, which “highlights the involvement of the British monarchy in the appalling trade,” The Guardian writes.

“This document offers clear evidence of the British monarchy’s central involvement in the expansion of the slave trade, and the huge importance of crown support for the enslaving voyages to Africa,” Newman said to The Guardian. “Edward Colston has become notorious now due to historians’ dedicated research and campaigners in Bristol, but in fact he was a far less significant figure than the successive kings and queens who invested and gave royal backing to slavery and the slave trade.”

“The publication of the document has added impetus to calls for the royal family to thoroughly investigate their historical links to transatlantic slavery, The Guardian writes.

The Guardian also writes: “Four lines of elaborately ink-written scrawl state that £1,000 of shares were given to William III in 1689. The shares were in the Royal African Company (RAC), which captured, enslaved and transported thousands of African people, with the monopoly power of a royal charter. The document clearly bears the handwritten name of the now notorious Edward Colston.”

According to the report, King Charles III and Prince William have expressed “profound sorrow” at the “appalling atrocity of slavery.”

The Guardian also reported that Newman is writing a book titled, The Queen’s Silence, which will examine the British monarchy’s involvement in slavery and its attempts to hide its direct connection to slavery.

News about the British monarchy’s involvement with slavery comes after several universities such as Georgetown, Rutgers University, Virginia University, and Harvard University have acknowledged their participation in slavery.