In 2021, the Principal of the University of St Andrews commissioned a research project to investigate the ways in which the University has benefitted from, participated in, or supported, British colonialism and imperialism. The initial stimulus came from the widespread public interest in the links between British institutions and the historic Atlantic trade in enslaved persons, but the St Andrews investigation was purposefully framed to incorporate a broader perspective on transnational connections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
We began this project with no doubt that colonialism, empire, trade and slavery would have left both financial and intellectual legacies to our institution and its community of people. The question was what the nature of the links at St Andrews would turn out to be, and what chronological, geographical or other patterns we might discover. We hope that our findings will deepen institutional understanding, and prompt debate about the way a modern, forward-looking institution should best respond to and reflect on these historical certainties.
