British Universities and Transatlantic Slavery: the University of Glasgow Case

Abstract

On 16 September 2018, the University of Glasgow released the report ‘Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow’. This acknowledged that slave-owners, merchants and planters with connections to New World slavery – and their descendants – donated capital between 1697 and 1937 that influenced the development of the institution. In producing this report, the institution became the first British university to declare historical income derived from transatlantic slavery. In response, a nine-point programme reported as reparative justice was launched, the first British university to launch a project on such a scale. This article traces both the methodological approach undertaken in the study and the historical evidence related to the University of Glasgow. This provides insights into the process of collecting and analysing the evidence on which the report and strategy was based. Current understandings about British universities and transatlantic slavery are shaped by the institutional relationship with owners of enslaved people. This article underlines the importance of merchant capital – in this case, mainly via West India commerce – to the development of one institution.

TheAbeng’s Call: The Articulation of Place and the International in Black Power Print Production

“…As a white geographer working in a prominent British university—a university that directly benefited from West Indian slavery (Mullen and Newman 2018)—I recognise that I occupy a position of structural privilege (Desai 2017) that has allowed me to study West Indian Black Power and produce this paper. Writing about and researching this paper on Black radical politics and variously marginalised groups requires reflexivity and care (Ouma and Premchander 2022).…”

The Worlds of UCL: teaching, learning and institutional histories

“…In the UK, there have been similar projects of re-evaluation, reparation and apology, again often envisioned as part of a wider call to 'decolonise the university' (Bhambra et al, 2018). Although lagging behind the USA, several universities have set up official inquiries into links with slavery and the slave trade, including the University of Glasgow, which was the first British university to set up an extensive reparative justice programme (Mullen, 2021;Draper, 2018). Other notable examples include individual Oxford and Cambridge colleges, notably All Souls College, Oxford, which has taken some steps to reflect on its associations with planter and slave-owner Christopher Codrington, who in 1710 left a bequest to fund the college's new library (Mullen, 2021).…”

“…Although lagging behind the USA, several universities have set up official inquiries into links with slavery and the slave trade, including the University of Glasgow, which was the first British university to set up an extensive reparative justice programme (Mullen, 2021;Draper, 2018). Other notable examples include individual Oxford and Cambridge colleges, notably All Souls College, Oxford, which has taken some steps to reflect on its associations with planter and slave-owner Christopher Codrington, who in 1710 left a bequest to fund the college's new library (Mullen, 2021). In some cases, such as at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, these inquiries have been undertaken and published with student support, despite significant internal opposition (Bell-Romero, 2022).…”

Centring transatlantic slavery in Scottish historiography

“…From 2017, a campaign (led by successor body, Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights) highlighted the absence of slavery in Scottish museums. The University of Glasgow launched a study of their own historic connections with slavery, responding with a 'reparative justice' strategy in 2018 (Mullen, 2021a). The city of Glasgow itself followed with a study of slavery and its built heritage in 2019.…”