The University of St Andrews and the Legacies of Empire, 1700-1900

Message from the Principal

On 13 March 2025, the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews, Professor Sally Mapstone wrote:

I am writing to you today to draw your attention to the publication of ‘The University of St Andrews and the legacies of empire, 1700-1900’, a report which examines in detail the ways in which the University of St Andrews has benefitted from, participated in, or supported British colonialism and imperialism.

I commissioned this work in 2021 in response to growing awareness, and concern, in universities, and in society more broadly, about links between British institutions and the Atlantic slave trade. That issue is as live and pertinent today as it was four years ago.

Professor Fyfe and Dr Robinson’s ‘Legacies of Empire’ research examined not only links to the slave trade but also how the University benefited from and contributed to British colonialism overall. As a result, its findings differ from other institutions’ reports that focus solely on slavery…

It is not for me to interpret this report for you. It is my hope, however, that all of you will find the time to read it, or at least its summary, because it raises important questions for all of us about the practices, and wealth, which shaped the historic, and the modern, St Andrews.

Legacies of Empire is not an end but a foundation for ongoing institution-wide debate, fostering a deeper understanding of how colonial exploitation benefited the University and how we should respond as responsible global citizens and custodians of 21st-century St Andrews.

Referring to the School of English’s ongoing commitment to reassess the colonial history of the Berry Chair, the Principal added:

This is one example of the way in which we can respond constructively to the evidence of ‘Legacies of Empire’, and the questions it raises. We continue to support and engage in research across all Schools and Units to identify further areas of learning from our collective past. It is my hope that our Schools and Units, and other groups within our community, engage with this report in similar ways and consider how its findings might shape what we do now and in future.

Under our Race Equality Charter Action Plan, we are committed not just to publish this report but to hold a series of reflective seminars, workshops and activities to examine how empire and colonialism still impact culture in St Andrews today, and to cascade learning and ideas from these events to Principal’s Office, and Heads of School and Unit.

The Principal’s full message can be found TBC.

Executive Summary of the Report

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 sought to deepen institutional understanding, and to prompt debate about the way a modern, forward-looking institution should best respond to and reflect on these historical certainties.

We began this research project with no doubt that the University of St Andrews would prove to have benefitted from British colonialism and imperial expansion, and that these ‘legacies’ would have continued to help shape the institution today. The questions for us were what the nature of the links at St Andrews would turn out to be, and what chronological, geographical or other patterns we might discover

Over two years of research, this project has investigated the legacies that colonialism, empire, trade and slavery have left to the University of St Andrews, both as institution and as a community of students and staff. As well as monies received, it has investigated the personal or family connections of members of the University community. It has sought to explore how members of our community had contributed to debates about enslavement and race, or about colonialism and empire; and to discover how British colonialism shaped the culture and community of our University.

This report explains what our investigation of University people and University money has revealed about the connections between those people or funds and colonial or imperial activity (including participation in systems of unfree labour) between 1700 and 1900.

Our key findings are:

There were people closely associated with St Andrews who were involved in expanding British colonial power overseas, and many former students of St Andrews participated in the imposition of British power on distant parts of the world, most often under the auspices of the East India Company.
The University has derived long-term benefits from gifts and benefactions from donors associated with the ownership of or trade in enslaved people. Most prominent is the donation from James Brydges, duke of Chandos and a director of the slave-trading Royal African Company in the early 1720s. Senior figures in the eighteenth-century University had close family connections to enslavement, including principal Thomas Tullideph and principal George Hill. The University continued to receive benefactions from individuals whose business interests depended on enslaved or unfree labour (including the Guthrie brothers, George Clerk Cheape and David Baxter) until well into the late nineteenth century.
The University has derived long-term benefits from gifts and benefactions from donors whose wealth was accrued from living and working in (or trading with) areas under British political and commercial influence. Around 10% of the modern University endowment derives from the gifts made by such donors, 1700-1900. Numerically, these gifts were most commonly associated with service to the East India Company. In terms of value, Australia was most significant, due to two late nineteenth-century donations from William Russell and (especially) David Berry, both of whom are associated with the displacement of Indigenous peoples.
Around 16% of the students educated or examined at St Andrews in this period engaged in professions or occupations that took them overseas, as ministers, doctors, educators and colonial administrators, most often in the service of the East India Company. The University also educated students who emigrated to Australia, Canada and the USA. Overseas alumni were an important source of donations of natural history specimens, ethnographic objects, and ‘oriental’ manuscripts to the joint University and Literary & Philosophical Society museum in the mid- and late nineteenth century.
Few individuals at St Andrews appear to have been publicly contributing to the scholarly debates about slavery or race. In terms of participation in public campaigns for abolition, there is some evidence of indifference (at best) towards efforts to abolish the slave trade in the early 1790s. By the late 1820s, attitudes had changed in St Andrews, as in the rest of Britain, and Thomas Chalmers was able to persuade his colleagues to petition parliament for the abolition of slavery in 1826. By the 1860s, students and staff were treating chattel slavery as a clear moral evil whose abolition (e.g. in the US) was obviously desirable.
Many of the nineteenth-century professors had close family members in British India and elsewhere, but very few of our academic community between 1700 and 1900 had any personal experience of life beyond Europe, or of meeting people from other cultures or ethnicities.
Just under 3% of students at St Andrews in this period had been born overseas. Almost all of these overseas-born students were from European (usually Scottish) families. In the late eighteenth century, this group included some students born in the British Atlantic world. From the early nineteenth century, there was a steady stream of students who had been born in British India, and by the second half of the nineteenth century, there were also some from Australia and Canada. After 1850, we have found evidence of some students with Indian and mixed racial ancestry coming briefly to St Andrews to be examined for M.D. degrees, as well as one student of Yoruba ancestry (West Africa).

Read the Report

Fyfe, A., with Robinson, I., Vancisin, T., Leith, S., & Ylitalo, M. W. The University of St Andrews and the Legacies of Empire, 1700-1900 (University of St Andrews, 2025) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14975043