Philanthropy at the University

Explore the Donors who gave money to benefit the University of St Andrews and/or its students; or investigate the Funds that the University established to spend that money.

You can dive deeper using the tags to explore gender, different time periods, or particular regions etc. For instance:

• Female donors
• Donations with associations to the East India Company
• The earliest donations in our study (1700-1750)

There are entries here for all 86 gifts that benefitted the University and/or its students during the period 1700 to 1900, and for the 69 individuals and 13 groups or organisations who donated those gifts. There are longer entries for those donors whose wealth was associated with enslavement and/or colonialism and empire (and these people featured in section 3 of the project report). We present brief accounts of ALL the donors, and ALL the funds in case there are colonial connections we have not yet uncovered; but also as an intriguing insight into the nature of philanthropy in eighteenth and (especially) nineteenth-century Scotland.