The Queen’s Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I and the Trafficking in Human Souls

By Nick Hazelwood

Harper Collins (2004)

Book Review

Sir John Hawkyns, memorialized to British schoolchildren for his heroic role in defeating Spanish Armada, played a far more crucial his historic role as England’s first slave trader. He was also the first Englishman to engage in triangular trade transporting English and Flemish textiles to Africa to trade for slaves and ivory, which he trafficked to the New World to trade for hides and Spanish silver and gold. As Hazelwood so carefully documents, Hawkyns was essentially a pirate, supported and outfitted (with sailing vessels, canon, small arms and other munitions) by Queen Elizabeth to savage other ships and raze villages in west Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and South America.*

By the time Elizabeth I authorized his first slave trading expedition, Hawkyns had already been in jail twice, for piracy and assaulting one of his political competitors (as a local politician in Bristol). Likewise on all three of his expeditions to Guinea (aka the west coast of Africa), the and his crew obtained most of their slaves via piracy, attacking the slave ships of hiPortuguese competitors.

On his third trip to the New World, colonial officials in San Jan de Ulúa (Mexico) anticipated his arrival and mobilized an army of 500 well-armed Spaniards and slaves, and 8,000 Indians. This armed confrontation forced Hawkins and his crew to return to England with the 57 unsold slaves.

Owing to this financial disaster for Hawkyns and his backers, he repeatedly sought royal permission to attack and pillage Spanish ships to recover his losses. In this case, Elizabeth I wisely declined.**

It was shocking to learn the extent to which the queen encouraged slave trading, especially as she clearly recognized its immorality. According to Hazelwood, she’s on record as asserting (in 1563) that it was wrong to kidnap Africans “without their free consent.”

The English monarchy remained heavily invested in slavery to provide the cheap labor essential to colonize the New World. They first employed slaves on sugar plantations in Barbados, which became and English colony in 1625. As Duke of York, the future James II, was president of the Royal Adventurers into Africa and had “DY” tattooed on the left buttock or breast of all the slaves captured by hi company.

In it final chapter, the book explores how the slave trade set Africa back by centuries by robbing the continent of millions of it youngest and fittest residents. Simultaneously it  provided Europe (Britain especially) with the economic capital it needed to launch a capitalistic economic system and simultaneously fund mass industrialization.

I was also intrigued to learn the French were the first European country to outlaw save trading in 1571.

*The Spanish King Phillip II had issued a royal decree prohibiting Spanish New World colonies from engaging in trade with countries other than Spain. Hawkyns essentially declared war on any Spanish settlements who obeyed this decree by refusing him a license to sell slaves.

**Hawkyns’ cousin, world famous explorer Francis Drake, participated in all three voyages and also engaged in piracy and slave trading.