Royal Slavery
“Royal Slavery” draws attention to the pivotal role of the monarchy in making the trade in humans central to England’s economy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The work features two “royal” branding irons which were placed into the hands of the statues of two English Kings - James II in Trafalgar Square and Charles II in Soho Square. Both kings were integral to the creation and running of the Royal African Company, which enslaved 150,000 men and women from Africa, selling them mostly in the Caribbean. The slaves were branded as royal property.
Branding iron inserted into statue of James II, who as Duke of York was Governor of the RAC.
James II, Trafalgar square
Before taking to the throne, James II was Duke of York, and Governor of the Royal African Company (RAC). Historians record that the RAC used two irons - one which branded people with an “RAC",” another “DY” for Duke of York. He remained an active shareholder of the RAC when he took to the throne. He only sold his shares when he was forced into exile, the profits from them funded his new life in France.
Charles ii, soho square
Charles II set up the Royal African Company (RAC), which had a monopoly of the monopoly of the slave trade from 1672 to 1698. At its peak in 1683, the RAC had 74% of the transatlantic slave trade. The royal monopoly only came to an end because English traders demanded their right to join the trade, but the company continued until 1731.
Inserting the branding iron. Lightweight materials were used to avoid damage to the statue, with a screw top handle.
Installation video:
Elephant and castle and the Royal African Company logo
The logo of the Royal African Company (RAC) was an elephant and castle, often flanked by two crude representations of black men. The branding irons were given handles with an elephant and castle embellishment.
Why I Put Branding Irons into Royal Hands
{A version of this article was published on Medium}.
If we tell a story at all about Britain’s legacy of slavery, it is of the (white) heroes of abolition. We don’t talk about how it started.
It started with the royal family.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was set up by Charles II in 1672 with a complete monopoly of the slave trade which lasted until 1698. At its peak in 1683, the RAC had 74% of the transatlantic slave trade. The royal monopoly only came to an end because English traders demanded their right to their share of the trade, after which the company continued until 1731. Over that time around 150,000 Africans were enslaved by the RAC, mostly sold in the colonised Caribbean.
As historian William Pettigrew writes, the RAC “shipped more enslaved African women, men, and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade.”
It was not just Charles II who was instrumental in the RAC. In its early years it was run by the King’s brother, the Duke of York, who was Governor of the RAC, effectively its CEO. The Duke of York remained an active shareholder even when he took to the throne as James II. When he went into exile he sold his shares to fund his new life in France. Before Charles and James created their monopoly, the first pirate slaving voyages by John Hawkins were supported by Elizabeth I, involving the seizure of hundreds of enslaved men and women from Portuguese ships who were then sold in the Caribbean.
The RAC used branding irons to permanently mark enslaved men and women as the property of the RAC or the Duke of York. Amid the many horrors of slavery, there is something so extraordinarily casual in the violence of branding, a process described by the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass as “cruel and agonising.”
To represent this, I made two branding irons, one with an “RAC” iron which reconfigured a statue of Charles II in Soho Square, another with a “DY” (for Duke of York) which I inserted into a statue of James II in Trafalgar Square. The irons I made were decorative and gilded: this departure from realistic replica towards an aesthetic of regalia sprang from imagining how a royal sculptor might have incorporated these objects into a royal statue; as detached from the horror of the instruments as the monarchs appeared to be wilfully detached from the dehumanising violence of enslavement.
I topped both irons with the symbol of the RAC, an elephant and castle for the handle (see above for a version of this emblem flanked with two caricatures of black men). The historical roots of the elephant and castle symbol is somewhat imprecise, but almost certainly connected to the slave trade, a detail of particular interest to Londoners familiar the eponymous London neighbourhood.
Campaigners have fought for decades to remove statues of those most closely tied to slavery, with figures such as Bristolian Edward Colston, a member of the Royal African Company, largely carrying the can for the company’s legacy. I’ve watched in awe this year as the Black Lives Matter movement catalyzed campaigners’ move towards direct action around our public monuments to slavers. Somehow the monarchy has remained above this debate, despite creating and effectively running the RAC for years and profiting from it for decades. Judging by some of the responses to my intervention, plenty of people were, like me, unaware of this dismal royal back story.
Art can play an important role in disrupting racist narratives and histories. This work aimed to insert the royal legacy of slavery into a space of critical public discourse. Unlike the frustrated Bristol campaigners who resorted to toppling Colston’s statue after years’ of failing to push local bureaucracies to act, I had no interest in damaging the statues. Consequently I used lightweight materials, a leather-bound handle and a screw top for easy installation and removal. I listed the work on online art listing sites to encourage visitors, with a plaque and QR code for those wanting to know more.
As I left Trafalgar Square I noticed a bus driver filming what I’d been doing and went over to explain myself. “So you’re one of those statue people,” he said disapprovingly, “history is history, it should be left alone.” I respect his point of view, not least because he was black and I’m a privileged white woman. Staff at the National Gallery perhaps agreed with the driver: several hours later the iron was removed, presumably by the gallery, which serves as custodian on the statue. The iron in Soho Square stayed in place for ten days, until it was removed in what appeared to be a curious counter-protest, with someone replacing it with a plastic crucifix on a rosary. Was this a royalist, blessing the statue after my defacement? Or the last Jacobite, protecting the honour of the Stuarts, who marked the end of Catholic monarchs? Or perhaps a follower of @SaveOurStatues, where the most fevered tweets in opposition to Royal Slavery were found.
Plenty share the view that history is best left alone, but our historical canon is far from neutral. This is a country where historians remember Charles II as “The Merry Monarch” or more recently the “King of Bling” and forget his instrumental role in England’s slave trade. It is also a culture in which we peer into every detail of Meghan and Harry’s lives but barely consider the history that winds between a descendant of slaves and the slaving of English royals.
We will not have justice and equality in this country without acknowledging the abuses of our past.
We need to talk about royal slavery.
Postscript: The branding iron in Soho Square (left) was removed and replaced with a rosary and crucifix (right).
Want to read more?
Frederick Douglass, A Few Facts and Personal Observations of Slavery - An Address Delivered in Ayr, Scotland on March 24, 1846. In F. Douglass, The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One–Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. (p. 195). Yale University Press.
Madge Dresser, Set in Stone? Statues and Slavery in London. History Workshop Journal, 162- 199, 2007.
Afua Hirsch, We Need to Talk About the British Empire (podcast on Audible, 2019); and Brit(ish) - On Race, Identity and Belonging. Random House 2018.
Kumie Inose, What was Remembered and What was Forgotten in Britain in the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade? In H. Suzuki, Abolitions as a Global Experience. NUS Press 2016.
David Olusoga, Black and British - A Forgotten History. Macmillan 2006.
William Pettigrew, Freedom's Debt The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752. University of North Carolina Press 2009.
The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL traces the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain, with a searchable database.
Runnymede Trust and the TIDE Project (University of Liverpool)'s, Teaching Migration, Belonging and Empire in Secondary Schools (2019)