from The Critic
The Church of England’s self-flagellation over its supposed past investments in the slave trade is based on seriously flawed research
In 2023 the Church Commissioners, as the managers of the endowment funds of the Church of England, announced the creation of a £100 million fund for “a programme of impact investment, research and engagement”, dedicated “to address some past wrongs by investing in a better future”.
The term “past wrongs” referred to an alleged association, effective between 1723 and 1739, of certain historic endowments of the Church (known as “Queen Anne’s Bounty”) with 18th-century transatlantic trading in enslaved people by the South Sea Company. The allegations were contained in a report commissioned by the Church Commissioners.
Their report maintained that this investment provided the Church with a large financial advantage at the expense of much human suffering, of which its then authorities are said to have been well aware (a statement entirely unsupported), and in which their evidently insouciant indifference, no less culpable than lamentable, rendered them complicit.
The sentiment and the intent appear entirely laudable. However, closer examination of the historical evidence casts doubt on the assumptions and claims upon which they relied.
Reappraisal began with an article followed by a letter from emeritus Professor Richard Dale of Southampton University published in the Church Times of 22 March and 5 April 2024 respectively. Professor Dale called upon the authors to withdraw the report on which the Church authorities were relying and to “apologise to the Church Commissioners for making false connections between the Bounty’s investments and the slave trade based on inadequate economic research”.
In issuing a dismissive response (Church Times, 14 June 2024) the Church Commissioners have appeared uncomprehending. Misled by misunderstandings evident throughout the report, they have not understood that the purchase of “South Sea annuities” constituted no investment in the South Sea Company at all. These were government annuities capitalised on historic government debt, the interest arising from which was paid not out of the profits made on any kind of overseas trade but solely out of the receipts of national taxation.