By Alistair Smout
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s University of Cambridge said on Thursday it had benefited from the profits of slavery throughout its history and pledged to expand scholarships for black students and fund more research into the slave trade.
The recognition comes as a number of leading institutions – from the Bank of England to the Church of England – reassess the central role slavery played in Britain’s enrichment and how they benefited from its injustices.
Cambridge said an investigation it commissioned found no evidence that the university itself ever owned slaves directly. But the findings showed she received “significant benefits” from slavery.
Those gains came from university benefactors raising money from the slave trade, university investments in companies that participated in it, and fees from rural landowning families, according to the investigation report.
The researchers concluded that Cambridge College scholarship holders were involved with the East India Company, while Royal African Company investors also had ties to Cambridge – two companies active in the slave trade.
The university also received grants from investors from both companies and invested directly in another company active in the slave trade, the South Sea Company, according to the document, produced by a group of Cambridge academics.
“Such financial involvement helped to facilitate the slave trade and brought very significant financial benefits to Cambridge,” the report Legacies of Enslavement reported.
Several people are also honored at the university without reference to their involvement, the report noted.
Meanwhile, the Fitzwilliam Museum was founded with money and artwork inherited from a representative of the South Sea Company.
In response to the report, the university said the museum would hold an exhibition on slavery and power in 2023, while the Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology recommended that its Benin Bronzes, taken in a violent 19th-century military campaign from territory that later became part of modern Nigeria, are returned.
Cambridge will also create a dedicated center to research the legacies of slavery, deepen ties with universities in the Caribbean and Africa and increase postgraduate scholarships for black British students as well as those from Africa and the Caribbean, the university said. .
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