Audio only
The Crown's Silence
The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the AmericasBy Brooke N. NewmanNarrated by Allyson JohnsonLength14h 25m
About this audiobook
For readers of Annette Gordon-Reed and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the shocking untold story of the British royal family’s centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy—from Elizabeth I to the present—and the monarchy’s culpability in the racial injustice that gave birth to the United States.
Narrated by Allyson Johnson.
For centuries, Britain has told itself and the world that it is an abolitionist nation, one that, unlike the United States, rejected human bondage and dismantled its Atlantic slave empire without tearing itself apart in violence. An abolitionist nation headed by a just, humane monarch who liberated enslaved Africans and recognized their descendants as free and equal subjects of the British Crown. As Prince William put it recently, “We’re very much not a racist family.” When slaveholding nations write their collective history, the enslavers hold the pen.
Now, acclaimed historian Brooke Newman reveals the true story: the enslavers were supported by members of the royal family. From the 1560s to 1807, the British monarchy invested in the transatlantic slave trade and built a slave empire in colonial America and the Caribbean, with the labor of millions of enslaved Africans who would see none of its riches. It profited from African slave trading and hereditary bondage, setting the stage for other colonial powers to develop brutal slave systems that remained legal long after full emancipation in the British Empire in 1838. The scars of this history remain visible the world over, from economic inequality and educational and health disparities to racial discrimination and prejudice. Still, Crown officials continue to insist the legacies of slavery “belong to the past.”
Newman focuses not on portraits of British monarchs but on their actions and investments that led to the rise and fall of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial slavery, and on some of the people whose lives it took, placing the struggles and sacrifices of innumerable individuals of African origin and ancestry at the center of Britain’s story.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.9 (66)
Includes Goodreads, LibraryThing
GenreHistory, Psychology
Length14 hrs 25 mins
Narrated byAllyson Johnson
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJan 20, 2026
LanguageEnglish
A Brief History of IntelligenceMax S. Bennett12h 18m4.6 (6.6K)$29 · $0.00
Ghosts of HiroshimaCharles Pellegrino8h 59m4.5 (877)$23
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn21h 56m4.7 (8.9K)$46 · $0.00
The Happiest Man on EarthEddie Jaku3h 48m4.6 (178K)$7 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
Where Cowards Go to DieBenjamin Sledge8h 42m4.7 (351)$20 · $0.00
RevolutionariesSanjeev Sanyal11h 23m4.6 (2.6K)$29 · $0.00
We Crossed a Bridge and It TrembledWendy Pearlman6h4.6 (5.2K)$24 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
BeyondStephen Walker15h 39m4.6 (3.2K)$33 · $0.00
Kings and PawnsHoward Bryant10h 9m4.6 (678)$29 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Jubal Stone: U.S. Marshal: Blood Trail To Hell: A Western Adventure NovelCasey Nash3h 42m4.6 (3.2K)$18 · $0.00
Fall and RiseMitchell Zuckoff17h 23m4.6 (9.8K)$40 · $0.00
The SurvivorJosef Lewkowicz, Michael Calvin9h 22m4.6 (2.5K)$29 · $0.00
What to Make of a LifeJim Collins13h 31m4.4 (793)$33 · $0.00
Black AF HistoryMichael Harriot15h 43m4.7 (14.6K)$33 · $0.00
Bad Fat Black GirlSesali Bowen6h 32m4.7 (2.8K)$24 · $0.00
Invisible StormJason Kander6h 48m4.7 (3.2K)$24 · $0.00
I Am The StormJanice Dean9h4.6 (1.5K)$8 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
TerraformPropaganda5h 39m4.7 (594)$24 · $0.00
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (Annotated)Ida B. Wells-Barnett2h 44m4.6 (1.3K)$2 · $0.00
Hour of the HeartIrvin D. Yalom, Benjamin Yalom8h 19m4.6 (2.3K)$26 · $0.00
Braving the TruthRachel Held Evans11h 31m4.7 (359)$29 · $0.00
Level UpRob Dial7h 42m4.6 (3.3K)$26 · $0.00
As a JewSarah Hurwitz8h 36m4.6 (1.2K)$26 · $0.00
Burn the HaystackJennie Young, PhD9h 30m4.6 (543)$29 · $0.00
Woman and the New Race (Annotated)Margaret Sanger6h 30m4.6 (1K)$1.99 · $0.00
Good InsideBecky Kennedy9h 55m4.5 (59.3K)$29 · $0.00
Du Bois: EssaysW.E.B. Du Bois6h 22m4.6 (1.5K)$1 · $0.00
The North American Indian (Illustrated Edition)Edward S. Curtis, Frederick Webb Hodge5h 59m4.6 (1.4K)$2 · $0.00
Valley of the BirdtailAndrew Stobo Sniderman, Douglas Sanderson10h 1m4.6 (2.4K)$29 · $0.00
Lies My Therapist Told MeGreg E. Gifford9h 3m4.6 (503)$29 · $0.00
Disturbed in Their NestsAlephonsion Deng, Judy A. Bernstein11h 22m4.6 (595)$23 · $0.00
You may also like
Second Treatise of GovernmentJohn Locke5h 54m4.0 (29.4K)$4 · $0.00
Second Treatise of GovernmentJohn Locke5h 15m4.1 (32.6K)$12 · $0.00
The PrinceNiccolo Machiavelli3h 10m4.0 (468.6K)$3.50 · $0.00
The Elections That Changed the WorldDana Bash9h 59m4.0 (1.2K)$29 · $0.00
Reflections on the Revolution in FranceEdmund Burke11h 29m4.0 (7.5K)$20
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Socialist Essay) (Annotated)Karl Marx6h 3m4.3 (8K)$0.99 · $0.00
Common Sense & The Rights of ManThomas Paine41h 39m4.3 (18.7K)$1 · $0.00
The French RevolutionIan Davidson11h 52m3.9 (2.4K)$23
Common SenseThomas Paine2h 37m4.1 (250.4K)$3 · $0.00
Reflections on the Revolution in FranceEdmund Burke12h 18m4.0 (17.2K)$1 · $0.00
The Magna CartaAnonymous1h 34m4.0 (402)$2 · $0.00
The French RevolutionThomas Carlyle32h 11m4.0 (3.3K)$6 · $0.00
The French Revolution 1789-17-1795Bertha Meriton Gardiner9h 3m$2.30
Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial DemocracyJohn Spargo11h 8m$1 · $0.00
The Story of Bacon's RebellionMary Newton Stanard3h 15m$1 · $0.00
France in the Eighteenth CenturyJohn Morley51m$2 · $0.00
Ireland under the Stuarts and During the Interregnum (Vol.1-3) (Annotated)Richard Bagwell40h 40m$1.99 · $0.00
Franco-GalliaFrançois Hotman5h 42m$2 · $0.00
The Abbatial Crosier; or, Bonaik and Septimine. A Tale of a Medieval AbbessEugène Sue5h 21m$2 · $0.00
Novanglus EssaysJohn Adams7h 19m4.2 (37)$2 · $0.00