Welcome to the Spring 2026 newsletter from History Reclaimed. Kings, empires and reparations fill our pages, though there is also a timely reminder of what may happen to nations that forget their history.
Robert Tombs points to the irony that the University of Cambridge, not now notable for its support for the British monarchy, is nevertheless content to send its collection of 116 Benin Bronzes into the safekeeping of the ruler of Benin, its Oba – and this despite the protests of organisations formed by descendants of slaves, living in the United States, who are deeply opposed to the return of these artefacts to the royal house that enslaved and traded their ancestors.
But this ‘restitution’ is as nothing to the trillions of dollars now demanded by the African Union and Caribbean nations who together piloted a motion through the General Assembly of the United Nations last month, March 2026, calling on the UN’s judicial arm, the International Court of Justice, to open a case for reparations from those nations in western Europe historically associated with the Atlantic slave trade. We examine the mendacious and specious aspects of this ‘lawfare’ and its highly partial interpretations of history, and draw attention to the degradation of international law that will follow from this sort of malpractice.
Reparations for slavery and the abuse of international institutions.
Meanwhile, the concept of reparations is spreading geographically and coming much closer to the present day, and it is usually Britain in the dock. In a deeply researched essay on the so-called Al-Bassa Massacre of 1938 in mandate Palestine, then under British trusteeship, Alistair Parker reminds us that a claim for reparations for British control of that territory between 1918 and 1948 is now alive and kicking: https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/al-bassa-massacre-1938/ As Alistair shows, however, the history is complex and does not support the claims made. What happened at Al-Bassa is being used to justify reparations, but the events there are unclear and the deaths were probably not the responsibility of British forces.
The problems of Palestine remind us of all the costs of empire. It has become an apparently accepted public fact that Britain profited hugely from its empire. All sorts of wild claims have been made about the profits of empire underpinning the Industrial Revolution, and the living standards of the British going up in step with imperial exploitation. Yet as historians have known for some decades, and as our article argues, the empire was more likely a ‘millstone round our necks’ in Disraeli’s phrase from 1852:https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/did-the-empire-pay/ The costs of imperial defence and of the garrisoning and governing of imperial possessions probably balanced the profits accrued to the nation in general. The Victorians could see this and therefore favoured building ‘an empire of free trade’ rather than an empire of annexation – a trading bloc where goods could be exchanged freely, to Britain’s advantage, rather than a formal political union.
Defending the empire and projecting British power depended on the Royal Navy, of course. The ecent revelations that this once great force is in a parlous state with most of its few vessels unfit for service (even if the British government wanted to assist the United States in the Middle East, which it doesn’t) has prompted Robert Tombs to remind us of our debts to ‘the senior service’ in home waters, defending Britain from European enemies, and overseas in the defence of the empire and the projection of British power. https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/royal-navy-decline/ As Robert argues, this is not just a failure of policy and of finance but of our historical awareness. The British have forgotten what they owe to a large, efficient and well-led navy, and how important such a service still is today. It’s a lesson hard-learned at present, in particular, and our naval weakness is evidence of our national decline.
The Royal Navy made Britain impossible to invade. Now we face a rude awakening
Many contemporary historians, with axes to grind, do not forget, however. Or perhaps more accurately, they use the past as a weapon in the present. One of these is surely Brooke Newman in her new book The Crown’s Silence. The Hidden History of Slavery and the British Monarchy reviewed here by Alistair Parker: https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/british-monarchy-slavery-book-review/ A book combining slavery and royalty cannot fail, even if much of this story is already known. Fifteen reigns, and a sometimes circuitous succession, separate Charles III from his namesake Charles II who established the Royal African Company, which traded in slaves, in 1660 on the Restoration. At that distance, it isn’t clear why or how the contemporary monarchy can be held responsible for the sins of earlier kings and queens, just as we might object to wider claims that the British today are somehow responsible for practices – the slave trade and imperial slavery itself – that ended two hundred years ago. Judge for yourself. As Alistair concludes:
The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of Slavery and the British Monarchy
‘The Crown and its governments sometimes profited from these activities, but in the British case they more often did not, operating within a system that, as Adam Smith famously concluded, “derives nothing but loss from the dominion”. Whether there was any overall economic gain remains highly contested, and there must also be limits to how far present circumstances can realistically be attributed to decisions taken generations or centuries earlier.’
Professor Richard Dale, author of the standard work on the history of the South Sea Company and its infamous financial crash in 1720, known as the South Sea Bubble, has contributed an enlightening and helpful essay on the historical case against ‘Project Spire’, the plan set out by the Church of England to pay £100 million in reparations for its role in slavery and the slave trade, and to assist in raising a further £900 million for black causes as well. We have covered this extensively in History Reclaimed, notably in a long critique of the historical case made in support of Project Spire which we published last summer:
A critical commentary on Church Commissioners’ historic links to African chattel enslavement
Richard helpfully brings together all the historical evidence in one very clear and concise essay, showing that the Church’s extensive investments in South Sea Annuities had nothing to do with slavery, and that its very small investment in South Sea Securities – shares in the trading company which was at that time involved in the slave trade – occurred during the 1720s in a period of financial turmoil and had been liquidated by the end of that decade.
We draw to your attention the problem of the censorship of historical sources, in this case by the Library of the University of Sydney, which, having digitised material on the history of the early exploration of Australia, has now ‘redacted’ much of it.
‘Redacted’. How Sydney University Library Prevents Free Inquiry
Our essay explains why it has done this, and also shows how difficult it may become, under ‘protocols’ such as those put out by the library, to investigate anything related to native/indigenous/Aboriginal history. Our concern is that this kind of attitude will spread and influence the way other libraries, especially in western universities, treat legitimate research.
Finally, some good news. Last year Alistair Parker published on our website another of his closely researched essays, this time on the early life of Elihu Yale, whose benefaction to a college in New Haven, Connecticut, ensured the perpetuation of his name in Yale University. Alastair took issue with the presentation of the East India Company at the end of the seventeenth century when Yale was an employee in what became Madras in a new book Yale and Slavery, by the historian David Blight: https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/the-shame-of-yale-university/ Professor Blight presents an unnecessarily critical (and anachronistic) account of the East India Company, which at that stage in the 1690s, was a small trading venture struggling for its survival. We sent the essay to the author and to the President of Yale but received no reply.
We’re delighted to note, however, that the Center for British Art at Yale University is currently running an exhibition on Painters, Ports, and Profits. Artists and the East India Company 1750-1850. https://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/painters-ports-and-profits-artists-and-east-india-company-1750-1850. It emphasises the personal and stylistic interplay between Indian, Chinese and British artists in the service of the Company. It also refrains from judging the past and strives to attain the right balance. As the exhibition’s curators, Laurel Peterson and Holly Shaffer, write, ‘There is a deep and sometimes discomforting tension between the ventures of a powerful global corporation and the works of great beauty created by artists who worked under its auspices. This exhibition shows that we keep company with both legacies’. Exactly.
We thank our subscribers for their continuing interest and support. If you come across an issue or problem in the presentation of British and western history, or visit a local museum or gallery which has distorted the past, please contact us and please consider writing an essay for publication.
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The Editors
Lawrence Goldman
Robert Tombs
Zewditu Gebreyohanes
Alex Gray
