charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly

The historical roots of the elephant and castle symbol is somewhat i mprecise, but almost certainly connected to the slave trade, a detail of particular interest to Londoners familiar the eponymous London neighbourhood.Ĭampaigners 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 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 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. 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. 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.”

The RAC used branding irons to permanently mark enslaved men and women as the property of the RAC or the Duke of York. When he went into exile he sold his shares to fund his new life in France. The Duke of York remained an active shareholder even when he took to the throne as James II. 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. It was not just Charles II who was instrumental in the RAC. Over that time around 150,000 Africans were enslaved by the RAC, mostly sold in the colonised Caribbean.Īs 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.” 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.

At its peak in 1683, the RAC had 74% of the transatlantic slave trade. 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. If we tell a story at all about Britain’s legacy of slavery, it is of the (white) heroes of abolition. Why I Put Branding Irons into Royal Hands

Charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly