Camilla de Koning

Tawney Fellow, 2026/27University College London

Camilla de Koning is completing her PhD at the University of Manchester and Historic Royal Palaces. Her project analysed how British monarchs, from Charles II to George II (1660-1775), were personally connected to and involved in the expanding British empire. She specialises in the history of the British and Dutch Atlantic, focusing on slavery and kinship.

As Tawney Fellow, De Koning’s project examines how employees of the Royal African Company (RAC) navigated and undermined the company’s royal trading monopoly. Drawing on a unique source, the “Black Book,” which records 100 cases of illicit private trade, the project reconstructs the actions, motivations, and networks of captains, agents, and crew who engaged in contraband trade.

By combining prosopographical analysis with extensive archival research in the RAC records at The National Archives, Kew, the project reframes monopoly not as a fixed legal structure but as a contested economic practice shaped by incentives, enforcement, and individual agency. In doing so, it sheds new light on the everyday functioning of the early modern slave trade and the informal economies that sustained it.