While I understand and respect this perspective, the Queen was a figurehead who had pretty much zero influence on the policies of the nation. To hold her responsible for the actions of the British East India Company and other business interests is not exactly fair. Could she have been more outspoken about her nation's history of colonialism? No doubt, but she did not view her role as that of social commentator.
"I think when people voice those views, they're not thinking specifically about Queen Elizabeth," Smith said in a telephone interview from London. "They're thinking about the British monarchy as an institution and the relationship of the monarchy to systems of oppression, repression and forced extraction of labor, and particularly African labor, and exploitation of natural resources and forcing systems of control in these places. That's what they're often responding to. And that's a system that exists beyond the person of Queen Elizabeth."
