Crown brand burned into enslaved Africans, archives show

Enslaved African people were branded with hot metal cut in the shape of a royal crown. The order came in writing from London. It named the shoulder where the mark should burn.

The evidence was found by Dr Nicholas Radburn, a historian at Lancaster University, in the archives of the South Sea Company. That company was a British crown-backed enterprise that trafficked thousands of enslaved African people to plantations in the 1700s. The Guardian

The board in London sent a letter to its agents in Buenos Aires telling them to brand enslaved people. The directors sent out the crown brand itself. Heat the mark red hot, they instructed, and apply it to the left shoulder.

A doctor warned that the brand was large. It might endanger the people forced to bear it. The board told its agents to proceed.

The men giving that order sat at the centre of British public life. Members of the South Sea Company board included MPs and Bank of England directors.

Other paperwork shows how routine the marking was. A document from 1714 carries the words “Mark for Negroes at Barbados” alongside the branding logo.

The finding sits inside a wider record. The Register of British Slave Traders identifies thousands of investors in Britain’s trafficking of enslaved Africans, including kings and queens. It describes the enslaving and trafficking of more than 3 million African people over nearly 250 years as an official national enterprise led by monarchs.

A spokesperson for King Charles said he was “grateful to all those undertaking academic work in this area and thus contributing to the debate about how such issues might best be addressed”.

For readers new to this history, the companies matter. English monarchs chartered and backed two main trafficking companies, the Royal African Company and then the South Sea Company. A charter, in this context, is a formal grant of powers from the Crown.

Earlier research has traced the Crown’s close involvement. Charles II granted the Royal African Company exclusive rights to barter for enslaved Black people. The Guardian James, Duke of York, who later became King James II, was closely associated with that company. Enslaved Black Africans arriving in the Caribbean on its ships were at one point branded with the initials “DY”. The Guardian

Historians have said that over a period of 270 years, 12 British monarchs sponsored, supported or profited from Britain’s involvement in slavery. King Charles has signalled support for research into the monarchy’s historical links with transatlantic slavery.

What makes this latest discovery stand out is its physical detail. Not a ledger entry. Not a shareholding. A heated piece of metal, a left shoulder, and a crown.