Project People and Data

The Principal’s Office agreed to support a research project to investigate whether, and how, the University of St Andrews may have been involved in, or benefitted from, the slave trade, the use of enslaved or coerced labour, and colonial or imperial projects broadly conceived. The research began in September 2021.

People

Professor Aileen Fyfe (School of History) oversaw the project, provided academic supervision, and wrote the majority of the Report.

Professor Katie Stevenson (Principal’s Office, 2021-22) and Professor Lorna Milne (Principal’s Office, 2022-23) were valuable and astute co-directors of the project.

The bulk of the archival research was undertaken by Dr Isabel Robinson (Research Fellow in Modern History, September 2021-December 2022). Dr Robinson’s work underpins Section 3 of the Report, on Donors and Gifts; and she was crucial in establishing the scope, remit and approach of the overall project.

Additional research and research support was provided by:

  • Clara Tipper and Emma Hilary Gould (undergraduate StARIS interns, summer 2022), whose work supported Section 4 of the Report, on the professors;
  • Dr Tomas Vancisin (research assistant, summer 2023), whose analysis of the location data on students and alumni made Section 7 of the Report possible.
  • Dr Sarah Leith and Dr Matthew Ylitalo (research assistants, summer 2023), who collated Dr Robinson’s research on donors (Section 3), undertook further analysis, and prepared the donor biographies and fund summaries on this site;

We also thank:

  • For Section 6, on Collections: Conall Treen (PhD student, School of History); Rachel Hart (former Head of Special Collections); and Dr Katie Eagleton, Dr Jessica Burdge and Dr Catriona McAra of the University’s Libraries and Museums.
  • For Section 3.9, on the modern University funds: Stuart Halliday (Finance Office)

The entire project was supported by by the knowledge and expertise of many colleagues in the University community, particularly our Steering Group of: Dr Akhila Yechury (School of History); Professor Richard Whatmore (School of History); Professor Tobias Jung (School of Management); Professor Mark Harris (School of Anthropology, 2021-2022); Professor Julia Prest (School of Modern Languages); Dr Emma Bond (School of Modern Languages, 2021-2022); Dr Andrew Edwards (School of History, 2022-); Dr Katie Eagleton (University Librarian and Director of Collections and Museums, 2021-2022); Dr Jessica Burdge (University Collections and Museums, 2022-); Rachel Hart (former Head of Special Collections); Professor Emma Hart (Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania)

Supporting Data and Working Papers

Philanthropy Data

Section 3 of the Report explored the individuals and organisations who gave money to benefit the University of St Andrews and/or its students in the period 1700-1900, with a focus on those with clear links to enslavement and/or colonialism and empire. In order to identify these individuals, we had to investigate all known donors – and thus amassed a substantial amount of information about philanthropy in eastern Scotland.

We have a journal article in preparation that will use this material to discuss philanthropy at St Andrews more generally, and we present our information about all known donors/donations in two formats for others to explore.

There are short descriptions of all Donors, and all the Funds that their gifts supported, on this site. The tags make it possible to explore by gender, time period, purpose of gift, or source of wealth.

For those who prefer a chronological (and sort-able) list, the basic names, dates, and values for all Donors and all Gifts are available in spreadsheet format. Those donors known to be associated with colonialism or enslavement are marked as such.

  • List of Donors, 1700-1900 [a people-focused spreadsheet listing all known donors who gave money that benefitted the University of St Andrews and/or its students]
  • List of Gifts, 1700-1900 [a gift-focused spreadsheet listing all known gifts that benefitted the University and/or its students. Contains the same information as List of Donors, but with separate entries for distinct gifts from a single donor. Includes details of the Fund that the University established with each gift, i.e. the purpose to which it was put.]
  • Register of all Donors and Gifts [the mega-spreadsheet from which the List of Donors and List of Gifts were extracted. This sheet was constructed for statistical analysis, and was used to generate the tables in the Legacies of Empire Report. NB Does not incorporate minor revisions – e.g. some additional dates of birth – since late 2023.]

Our research also uncovered donors/donations that we later decided were out of scope for our project, but may be of interest to others:

  • Donations before 1700 that were still active after 1700
  • Donations to external trusts that could benefit the University of St Andrews and/or its students – but were not specifically or only for St Andrews (e.g. trusts that offered bursaries to all the Scottish universities).
  • Donations (mostly in the 1890s) that were technically made to the University of St Andrews, but were specifically intended for University College Dundee (and thus seem more appropriately part of the history of the University of Dundee).
  • A dataset with all three of these sets of donations is available.

We also have transcribed subscriber lists for two of the collective fund-raising projects of the later nineteenth century: the Bursary Augmentation Fund of 1885, and the University Hall Fund of 1892, and 1908:

  • Donations to University of St Andrews fundraising campaigns in the late nineteenth century (dataset)

Student and alumni data

Section 7 of the Report investigates the students who came from British colonies (including ex-colonies and future colonies), and the alumni who spent parts of their later lives in those regions. The Report could provide only the summary trends – those who would like to explore particular individuals or groups will find the following lists useful. The names have been extracted from the ‘Biographical Register of the University of St Andrews’ (which does provide an easier format for reading specific entries). For methods and the (many) limitations, see Working Paper D, below.

  • The Caribbean (including Jamaica, Antigua, St Kitts, Bahamas, Nevis, Guyana and more) [Excel dataset]
  • North America [Excel dataset]
  • the Indian Ocean (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) [Excel dataset]
  • Africa (mostly southern Africa) [Excel dataset]
  • Australia and New Zealand [Excel dataset]
  • Southeast Asia (including Singapore, Hong Kong, China) [Excel dataset]

NB, these lists do not include students or alumni who came from or went to places in the world that were never formally part of the British empire, e.g. the handful of alumni who went to Argentina.

Working Papers

Various working papers were presented to the Steering Group as the research developed. Many sections of those papers became the basis for the final Legacies of Empire Report – but some sections did not (particularly those sections discussing detailed methods, definitions and limitations). Those sections are available here, but note that they reflect the state-of-play in 2022-23:

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