While other reporters in the Guardian investigations team have travelled the country looking at horses, jewels and artworks to help uncover the royal family’s hidden wealth, for his part in the Cost of the crown project David Conn looked much further back in time.
With the historian Brooke Newman, he has been digging into the evidence that shows the British monarchy’s links with transatlantic slavery. What emerges is a newly surfaced document showing a 17th-century transaction: the transfer of £1,000 worth of shares in the Royal African Company to King William III.
It then emerged that direct ancestors of King Charles III and the royal family had bought and exploited enslaved people on tobacco plantations in Virginia, according to new research shared with the Guardian by the playwright Desirée Baptiste.
A spokesperson for the palace told us that the king would support a study into the links between the British monarchy and transatlantic slave trade by giving access to the royal archives and the royal collection. So far from the British state, there have been expressions of sorrow and a recognition of the horror of slavery, but no formal apology.
Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy
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