Legacies of enslavement exhibition

Legacies of enslavement at Cambridge

In 2019, the University of Cambridge announced an ‘in-depth academic study into ways in which it contributed to, benefited from or challenged the Atlantic slave trade and other forms of coerced labour during the colonial era’. 

This two-year inquiry explored archives and other records across Cambridge to uncover how the University may have gained from enslavement and the exploitation of labour, through both financial and other bequests. It also investigated the extent to which scholarship might have reinforced and validated race-based thinking between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Colleges were encouraged to consider undertaking their own inquiries.

Our Legacies of Enslavement research programme

As Newnham College was founded in 1871, more than a generation after Parliament’s Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, initially some assumed that we would have no, or very limited, links with enslavement. However, Newnham student representatives proposed a research project in the College Archives, funded by the College, to investigate our own Legacies of Enslavement. So in 2020, we began a Legacies of Enslavement Research Programme. This has included a series of public lectures, a reading and discussion group, and a student research project in the College Archives. 

As an institution dedicated to research, learning and education, we consider it is important to research our own foundations, reflect upon what it means to have been a beneficiary of late-Victorian philanthropy, and gain understanding of how this was built upon the financial legacies of earlier generations.

Our student research project

In September 2021, two student researchers spent three weeks carrying out focused research into our financial and social legacies of enslavement, focusing primarily on the transatlantic slave trade. They were supported by the College Archivist, an Academic Supervisor and the College Librarians. 

Newnham College is distinctive in having been founded and financed by a network of supporters of higher education for women. The researchers focused on identifying the social and economic networks within which Newnham’s early benefactors existed. In particular, they identified Newnham founders and benefactors who were members of families who benefitted either directly or indirectly from the Atlantic slave trade. Some families had members who were bankers, manufacturers or cotton mill-owners, professions where there may be links to enslavement. More research is needed to draw full conclusions as to the precise ties and links to the College via inherited wealth. But it is clear that, despite Newnham’s late 19th century foundation, there are links between the College and the Atlantic slave trade, and to enslavement elsewhere.

‘Our research demonstrates that multiple benefactors of Newnham College, both large and small, generated and inherited wealth from enslavement. Money flowed in multiple directions – across generations, through intermarried families and friendships and social networks.’ – Newnham College Legacies of Enslavement Report

 

Social networks: mapping connections

‘Identifying who people lived with, worked with, talked with, and prayed with was … essential to understanding where their money came from.” – Newnham College Legacies of Enslavement Report

 

Visualising networks

The researchers investigated the financial, familial, business, and social networks of those closely involved in the founding of the College, including administrators, academic staff, and donors. They found that ‘middle class financial and family management was characterised by tangled social webs’ with relatives going into business together, the children of business partners marrying, and relatives being relied on for security or loans. Christian confession occasionally provided an important link too, with Unitarian and (to a lesser extent) Quaker affiliation underpinning connections.

The world of supporters for women’s higher education was small, and those closely involved with Newnham were often also supporters of other women’s colleges in the UK and Germany.

The researchers took the important and interesting approach of using stakeholder mapping software as a way of recording and visualising these networks. We encourage you to explore this digital map.

‘We define a financial legacy as any legacy in which the link to enslavement comes from business or trade connections. Individuals … may be the direct recipient of the wealth generated through enslavement, or they may have inherited this wealth. We expand a financial legacy to further incorporate benefits arising from social networks and relations’ – Newnham College Legacies of Enslavement Report

Networks of women

Gendered dynamics of inheritance shaped the financial networks connecting Newnham College to enslavement. English common law allowed women to inherit and wealth was often bequeathed to an extended list of female family and friends. Many of the women connected to the college in its early years were ‘spinsters’ and distributed their estates amongst their friends or gave directly to the College. Anne Jemima Clough, first Principal of the College, made bequests to the College and a number of female relatives and friends connected to it.

Representing enslaved people

The researchers were committed to making enslaved people as visible as possible in the network model, where information about them was available. A key aspect of the digital map is that it includes enslaved people who could be identified and shows their place in the economic network, alongside the more familiar names in the College history. This information was drawn from registers that usually spanned only two years, so it represents a tiny fraction of the enslaved people connected to the College. The researchers wanted to include as many details about the enslaved people as possible, but emphasise that they were being recorded as ‘stock’ and the descriptions are not representative of who they were. 

‘We wanted to include as many details about the enslaved people in the registers as possible… [but]… the majority of the descriptions are simply the occupation of the enslaved, their distinguishing features and occasionally the mother. We did not want to reduce them to the way in which their owner saw them; however that was our only way to reach them… The path towards recovering the lives of the enslaved is a difficult one; scholars have grappled with this problem for years.’ – Newnham College Legacies of Enslavement Report

Our ongoing programme

Ongoing reflection

The student researchers and academic supervisor presented their report to Governing Body in March 2022. The research was warmly received, and the work of the student researchers and their supervisors was commended. The research was also presented to members of the College and researchers on the broader University inquiry. The College community has been reflecting on the next steps to take, guided by a working group of Fellows and student representatives. The MCR have curated a speaker series on legacies of enslavement, and student representatives on the Working Group organised and facilitated a workshop on reparative justice.

This exhibition forms part of our response and is timed to coincide with the University Museums exhibition Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition, which aims to bring out women’s stories in relation to enslavement. Library and archive staff will continue to develop displays and events that explore specific elements of our College’s history more deeply. 

Further research

It was agreed that the College should support further research by students into the financial interests identified in the initial case studies, and the social and financial links between late Victorian society, Newnham and the legacies of enslavement, as well as other under-explored aspects of the College’s history.

Continuing the model established by the Legacies of Enslavement research project, we have set up the Library and Archives Research Award, offering funded opportunities for students at all levels to carry out research based on College collections. In 2025, a postgraduate recipient of the Award began research into Legacies of Eugenics.

Collections research and accessibility

Library staff have been seeking to better understand and critically appraise the complex histories of our collections, focussing initially on the donations of Henry Yates Thompson. Using provenance records, they have been identifying rare books and manuscripts which may have an indirect connection to legacies of enslavement.

Yates Thompson’s meticulous recording of the provenance of his books and manuscripts has allowed us to identify two medieval manuscripts and four early printed books as having originally been in the collection of Joseph Brooks Yates. One of the medieval manuscripts, Piers Plowman, has been digitised and is now available on the Cambridge University Digital Library, with details of its provenance linking it to the Legacies of Enslavement enquiry. There are plans to digitise further library and archive items.

Working towards racial equality

The Legacies of Enslavement research programme is linked to broader work towards racial equality in all areas of College life, from outreach in schools in our Link Areas of Enfield, Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Birmingham and Walsall through to the nature of the artwork displayed within College. There is still much work to do to promote racial equality. We are fortunate to have the Margaret Anstee Centre as part of College, which focuses on research in economic and social development and international relations in the Global South. The Centre is funding a visiting academic from the University of the West Indies.