Book Talk: The British Monarchy and Slavery with Brooke N. Newman

The role of the British Royals in the Transatlantic Slave TradeDr. Brooke N. Newman discusses her book The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas in which she explores the British monarchy's involvement in slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Spanning hundreds of years and drawing on thousands of pages of archival records, the book starts with Queen Elizabeth I, the first British monarch to knowingly invest in and profit from the transatlantic slave trade and brings us all the way to present day. In this episode, Brooke shares her thoughts on the actions that the Crown, King Charles, and the British government can take to acknowledge this history and respond to the call for reparations.About Brooke N. NewmanDr. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain and the British Atlantic, with a focus on slavery and its legacies. She is the author of the award-winning book, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (Yale, 2018) and The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas (Mariner, 2026). Her writing and research have been featured in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Smithsonian Magazine, and she has served as a historical expert for HBO's Last Week Tonight, Vox, the BBC, and NPR, among others.WebsiteInstagramBluesky ResourcesThe Royal ArchivesGeorgian Papers ProgrammeThe Spirit of LawsSlave Voyages databaseThe Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery,, Michael Taylor Padraic X. Scanlan The Whiteness of Wealth, Dorothy BrownEpisodes ReferencedSlave Voyages: Documenting the Transatlantic Slave TradeThe Repair Campaign: Caribbean Reparations Explained