God Save us From The Queen.

God Save us from  the Queen

The Market Place of Ideas

Oct 2, 2022

As said by James Connelly, when the king visited Ireland in 1911: “We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.”

Throughout my life there have been things that have been staples within Pop culture.

There was a Pope, 99.9 percent of the world's population believed the earth was round and England had a Queen.

However, the news of Queen Elizabeth's passing has shaken the collective idea of certainty within the British Commonwealth and the world.

Critics of the royal family have used her death as an opportunity to re-think the monarchy’s role in modern day society,and ask the questions how to come to grips with a, institution that wields massive unearned power and  wealth. 

It was a shock to realize a good portion of the former Queen's wealth came from the British people in the form of the Sovereign Grant.

A Tax if you will that  pays for property upkeep and utilities, the family's travel, and royal employee payroll, according to official Royal Family financial reports.

Plus The Queen also outright owned Balmoral and Sandringham Estates, an expansive art collection, and other valuable assets that had been passed down from earlier monarchs, Forbes magazine estimates its worth at $28 billion, pointing to the business front of the royal lineage known as “Monarchy PLC.” The family's most impressive official holding is the Crown Estate, a portfolio of assets that includes luxurious London properties worth $19.2 billion.

However one other item on their ledger 

that many would love to ignore would be the amount of financial gain the Monarch earned from the sale of human beings.

The Royal family’s link to the sale and profit of African slaves goes way back to the 15th century. In 1562, John Hawkins was the first known English person to include enslaved Africans in his cargo, a journey that was approved by Elizabeth I. The Africans in his possession were traded for goods including ginger and sugar. In 1564, Hawkins arranged another voyage, for which Elizabeth I not only approved of but personally funded.

Now you might think that this was a one time thing but in 1660, the Royal African Company was established by the Duke of York. Who would later become James  II, with help from his brother, Charles II. The Royal African Company was born.These merchants of death played an instrumental role within the slave trade; according to the Slave Voyages website, between 1672 and 1731 the Royal African Company transported more than 187,000 slaves.Some of those very slaves were purchased from local African leaders.

African Leaders like 

Nigerian journalist and novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubanis great-grandfather.

Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku,.

This Nigerian slave trader was a  businessman, from the Igbo ethnic group of south-eastern Nigeria. He dealt with a number of goods, including tobacco and palm produce.

He had agents capture slaves from various different places and bring them to him,where he would then sell them over to the Royal African Company.

One of the things that gets woefully over looked within the history of the Trans Atlantic slave trade is how many African nations like Nigerian, Madagascar and Sierra Leone captured and sold slaves to Britain and Portugal 

Between 1690 and 1807, an estimated 6 million enslaved Africans were sold from west Africa to the Americas on British or Anglo-American ships.The slave trade was a multifaceted operation that was,

funded by greedy warlords and business men on one end in Africa and  protected by the Royal family and British Parliament on the other.

It would be absolutely impossible to estimate just how much of the current Royal family’s wealth is owed to slavery, but it is understood that the profits of the slave trade funded the Treasury, as well as Britain’s industries, buildings, railways, roads and parks.

So by the time, of Elizabeth's accession   the Royal Family was out of the Slave trade but due to her forefathers rapid expansion.

She was the head of state of seven independent nations: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). However during her reign, new realms have been created.

The independence of former colonies have become republics. Barbados is the most recent realm to become a republic; it did so on 30 November 2021

Now there are currently 15 Commonwealth realms: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom. All are members of the Commonwealth, an intergovernmental organisation of 56 independent member states, 52 of which were formerly part of the British Empire. All Commonwealth members are independent sovereign states, regardless of whether they are Commonwealth realms.

While Elizabeth ruled as Britain navigated a post-colonial era, she still bore a connection to its colonial past.A past based on the doctrine of cultural hierarchy and supremacy 

The true  legacy of colonization has long been documented by historians.The Great British machine used slavery, brutal suppression, and the extraction of resources from their colonized economies to enrich their pockets. As stated by Anna Arabindan-Kesson“For many people from the ‘colonies,’ the death of Elizabeth II signified the symbol of an empire built on genocide, slavery, violence, extraction, and brutality, needed to be rethought".

"the current rhetoric, pageantry, and colonial nostalgia around the Queens  death reinforces this refusal to acknowledge and deal with this imperial history" says Anna Arabindan-Kesson who is an associate professor of Black Diasporic art with a joint appointment in the Departments of African American Studies and Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. “

However Arabindan-Kesson is not the only intellectual to chime in on the folly of the past and modern day monarchy According to Prof Corinne Fowler, an academic at the University of Leicester. Prof Corinne specialises in Britain’s colonial legacies, the royal family and stated that “ The monarchy has an opportunity to show leadership by acknowledging its involvement in the slave trade, making a formal apology and asking openly and humbly what the family can do to begin to repair the damage”

During the reign of King Charles II, from 1660 to 1685, the Crown invested heavily in the African slave trade. Looking  to bolster the wealth and power of the restored monarchy and flip the bird to the Dutch in the Atlantic trading system, Charles granted a charter to the Company of Royal Adventurers Into Africa,he also lent the company a number of royal ships, and reserved for himself the right to two-thirds of the value of any gold mines discovered.This would allow Britain to control English trade with West Africa—in gold, hides, ivory, redwood, and, 

ultimately slaves.This financial strategy would give the Royal Family a revenue stream that would give them financial independence from Parliament. So they used enslaved black peoples to help solidify their own freedom. The irony is not lost on many of the former colonies in the Carribean,many of whom are now calling for reparations and repatriation due to all the resources that had been extracted to enrich the Monarchy.

Which leads us to the present day.

We are in a culture and society that no longer has a  use for a monarchy.

The idea of being allowed to live a life of luxury and privilege over the people of your nation,due to who you were fortunate enough to be born to is ludicrous.

But how do you get rid of an institution so ingrained into the fabric of the United Kingdom?

Members of the Royal Family often carry out official duties in the UK and overseas where and when the Monarch cannot be present in person, such as state funerals or national festivities, or undertaking visits to strengthen Britain's diplomatic and economic relations.

We are talking about an integral aspect of

the British Commonwealth where we don't even  know where the Royal family ends and Britain begins.

But once you boil it down British citizens 

are the ones that must come to the decision on what to do about the folks living in Windsor Castle 

Do they  hold on to the past glory of the Royal facade basking in the warm embers of a once bonfire of commerce and industry. Or move toward a future of prosperity and inclusion minus the crown

Only time will tell.