I live at the crossroads of the Commonwealth. My home is Canada, where First Nations people have called on King Charles to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery as his first official act. This law sanctioned the colonial possession of Indigenous lands and has justified violence against Indigenous people. I live in the French-speaking province of Quebec, which was ceded to the British empire in 1763. Here, the proposed abolition of the role of “lieutenant-governor”, the crown’s provincial representative, is a flashpoint in the upcoming election. And I am also a member of the Caribbean diaspora, a region that was violently pulled into the production of sugar to satisfy the bourgeois tastes of the British empire. To this day, the Caribbean bears the scars of Indigenous genocide, slavery, indentureship and colonialism.
For the people of formerly colonised countries, the monarchy is not a neutral institution. It is the embodiment of imperial legacies that benefited Britain at the expense of its colonies, and played an active role in the slave trade. Queen Elizabeth I financially backed slave-trading voyages, and by the 17th-century King Charles II granted royal approval to the Company of Adventurers of London Trading to the Ports of Africa, marking the moment at which transatlantic slavery officially began.
