The historian Aileen Fyfe has teamed up with Isabel Robinson, Tomas Vancisin, Sarah Leith, and Matthew W. Ylitalo to publish their report on the involvement of the University of St Andrews in the support of empire and slavery during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The team has conducted a detailed analysis of donors and gifts to the university to discuss what kind of links to British imperialism and especially slavery these entailed. They also researched how personal, family, and career connections of students, academics, and alumni contributed to the expansion of British colonial power overseas.
The report’s findings show that more than every second donor had certain imperial connections that justified inclusion into the report. Apathy and opposition towards the abolition of the slave trade prevailed until 1826, when Professor Thomas Chalmers convinced his peers to send a petition for the abolition of slavery to the British parliament.
The St Andrews report on the legacies of empire maps the birthplaces of students, the locations of alumni careers in areas of British colonial influence, and the career paths of alumni, thereby visualising the regional, national, and global linkages that members of the St Andrews academic community created across Scotland, the United Kingdom, and Europe, as well as across British colonial territories and the wider world.
For more information, the open access report, and the open access data, see the excellent project website:
St Andrews and the Legacies of Empire – St Andrews and the Legacies of Empire project