Exhibition considers College’s legacies of enslavement

An exhibition highlighting the links of Newnham College founders to the transatlantic enslavement economy, is to open at the College. The exhibition is part of a programme of enquiry, at Newnham and across the University of Cambridge, to consider ways in which collegiate Cambridge contributed to, benefitted from or challenged the Atlantic slave trade and coerced labour during the colonial era.

The exhibition, Legacies of Enslavement at Newnham College, is open to students, alumnae and academics from 22 April to October and will be open to the public for two sessions on Wednesday 14 May (times are detailed below). On 14 May there is also an evening lecture by Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi on Black culture and resistance, explored through the lens of African and Caribbean Carnival culture. In the talk, Flashes of Resistance, Flashes of Joy, Dr Nabugodi will also talk about her own experience of reading archives against the grain.

She said, ‘In 1799, a small group of Black women selling oranges to fresh arrivals at Port Royal in Jamaica composed an impromptu song: “New-come buckra, He get sick, He tak fever, He be die.” Bristling with spite and glee, this song is a rare example of a lyric composed by Black women to mock their purported ‘masters’. In this lecture, I will talk about my search for such nuggets of resistance in the Romantic era.’

Legacies of enslavement

As an institution dedicated to research, learning and education, Newnham considers it is important to research its own history and reflect upon what it means to have been a beneficiary of late-Victorian philanthropy.

Initially, as Newnham College was founded more than a generation after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, it appeared that the College would have few, if any, links with enslavement. However, as part of the University of Cambridge’s academic study into legacies of enslavement at the University, Newnham’s student representatives proposed a research project in Newnham’s archives funded by the College.

In just three intense weeks of research in 2021, two student researchers, supported by the College Archivist, an Academic Supervisor and the College Librarians, focused on identifying the social and economic networks within which Newnham’s early benefactors existed.

The College is distinctive in having been founded and financed by supporters of higher education for women. The students identified founders and benefactors who were members of families which benefitted directly or indirectly from the enslavement and plantation economy. Some came from families with bankers, manufacturers or cotton mill owners.

More research is needed to draw full conclusions about the precise ties and links to the College through inherited wealth. However, the Newnham College Legacies of Enslavement student researchers were clear in their report on the links.

'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.’ - Legacies of Enslavement report

The researchers took the innovative approach of using stakeholder mapping software as a way of recording and visualising these networks. They were committed to making enslaved people as visible as possible in this network model.

The researchers also created case studies that reveal how financial legacies, material bequests, and personal political ideologies could be at odds with one another in this period, with notable abolitionists still benefitting financially from enslavement.

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 unmarried 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 as well as to female relatives and friends connected to it.

Ongoing work

Since the well-received student research, the College community has explored further steps, guided by a working group of Fellows, staff and student representatives. Postgraduate students initiated a second speaker series and students also held a workshop to reflect on reparative justice. Library staff have been seeking to better understand and critically appraise the complex histories of Newnham College collections, focusing initially on donations which may have an indirect connection to legacies of enslavement.

This exhibition itself forms part of Newnham’s response to the research findings and is timed to coincide with the University Museums exhibition Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition which, among other aims, will bring out women’s stories in relation to enslavement.

To facilitate further research by scholars, the Archivist plans to digitise and make available the records referenced in the student research report that relate to the establishment of the College.

The Legacies of Enslavement programme is linked to the College’s broader work towards racial equality in all areas of College life, from outreach and admissions through to the nature of the artwork displayed.