There’s a reason for everything. That doesn’t mean an excuse or a guess made of ignorance, but an explanation for what was. A reason is a why, and in The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery by Brooke N. Newman (Mariner. January 27, 2026), you’ll see why the story of Black America didn’t begin in 1619 with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the British colony of Virginia.
In late November 2021, the Caribbean nation of Barbados held a celebration to mark the fifty-fifth anniversary of its removal of Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, and gained its political independence. The Queen wasn’t there, but Prince Charles, her son, was.
The Queen, in fact, didn’t even acknowledge the event. Her silence resonated backward more than 450 years.
On July 24, 1564, Diego Guzman de Silva, a representative of King Philip II of Spain, was granted an audience with Queen Elizabeth I. He was there to petition the throne for reassurance that Captain John Hawkins, a merchant who had been kidnapping Africans from Portuguese ships and selling them to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean, would not financially harm the Spanish kingdom. Elizabeth I promised de Silva that Hawkins was harmless but, says Newman, she knew what Hawkins was doing, and encouraged it by purposefully loaning him one of her largest warships.
The reason: Elizabeth I’s coffers were lacking and Hawkins brought gold back to England.
Gold was always the main sought-after treasure until the English were introduced to tobacco. Tobacco, says Newman, was financially good for newly landed British colonists in what is now Virginia, but it takes a lot to grow and harvest the crop. African slaves did the work, as did the many indentured servants in the New World. However, by 1633, when contracts for indentured labor ended, workers were still needed for the tobacco crops. More African slaves were brought up from the Caribbean to supplement the labor pool, until there were more African slaves in North America than there were Spanish and English colonists.
With all the talk—and a recently updated version—of the “1619” story, it’s easy to forget that enslavement of Africans didn’t just suddenly happen. The Crown’s Silence offers a wider, deeper look that lends even more understanding to the overall history and it does so without a single shred of fluff. Indeed, Newman takes you into heavy-duty British history, in a book that flirts strongly with academia. That may make it a daunting read, but necessarily so. The story is complicated, but once you’re aware, it’s pretty easy to follow the timeline Newman lays out.
Readers who still believe that America split with the U.K centuries ago, will see that ties between the two lingered, as does righteous resentment for some on both sides of the pond.
While The Crown’s Silence is an excellent volume for any Black history collection, reading it is not a breezy undertaking by any means. Take your time, follow along attentively, however, and it becomes a reasonably good read.
